Kingdom Hearts 3: Dark Retribution
by blackrogue123
Summary: Just when life seemed to become normal for the keyblade masters, Maleficent just HAD to try and get her revenge. Now, with Riku's heart being affected by strange emotions and Sora and Kairi's budding romance, can the three survive the onslaught? SxK RikOC
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Okay, this is my third Kingdom Hearts fic, and I've decided to try a pairing type that I don't think anyone's ever tried to pull off with Riku. The girl's personality is going to be one that I don't think anyone's ever tried with Riku, so their relationship may be a bit more romantic and a bit less funny than some more flamboyant OCs that good old Riku's been paired up with!

On with the disclaimer, and THEN on with the story!

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts but I do own my own characters, so no stealing!

* * *

"Kairi…" Sora moaned as the auburn haired princess of heart dragged both him and Riku through the various clothing stores of the town on the Destiny Islands, or "Destiny Town", as the three liked to call it. They were currently in the unofficial market district; it was where most of the stores and peddlers were. Because of the tropical temperatures on the chain of islands, building ANYTHING was an arduous task, so it was actually a common practice for people to use carts to show off their good to potential buyers. . Kairi had been like this ever since they had gotten back home after defeating Xemnas, she'd adamantly refused to let either of the boys out of her sight…especially Sora! "Do we really have to do this?"

She abruptly spun around in the middle of the dirt road that ran through the small town, completely ignoring the fact that she nearly hit several innocent bystanders in the process. "Yes we really have to do this, you two have been away for two years, and none of your clothes fit you!" Kairi put her hands on her hips as Sora quailed before her. While Kairi could be quite formidable when she was worked up over something, everything she did seemed to impact Sora more than it did anyone else. "Besides," she continued as a slight grin crept across her face. "I thought you guys enjoyed hanging out with me!"

"We do…," Riku gruffly replied matter of factly. "But this isn't "hanging out", this is shopping for clothes, there's a big difference!" Riku crossed his arms as a hint of a scowl etched itself across his lips. They had been putting up with people being over-protective of him and Sora for the past three weeks now! Their own parents had nearly forced all three teenagers into having therapy after they explained just where they had been all this time. It was only when they showed them their keyblades that their parents called off the appointment and instead resorted to keeping an eye on their children almost twenty four seven!

The trio's parents had only now stopped trying to ruthlessly keep track of them, and now, Kairi was doing the exact same thing to Sora and Riku! "You've been hounding us for the past few days; you really should lighten up, right, Sora?" The brunette took a subconscious step back as his two best friends turned their attention to him, both somehow expecting him to chose their side in the matter. While he was more inclined to agree with Kairi for…personal reasons (if you can call having a crush the size of the death star on her "personal reasons"), Kairi's constant vigilance was getting on his nerves, even considering how much he enjoyed her company!

"Er, well…" Sora was desperately trying to delay having to answer and choose a side as long as he could. He wanted to make both of his friends happy, not just start a fight between them. "You have been a little harsh on us, Kairi…" Sora looked down and began to stir up the dirt on the ground with his foot. He couldn't even look at Kairi as he said this; he could practically feel her eyes boring into him!

Suddenly, Kairi, out of all the things Sora had expected her to do, started giggling. "I…guess you're right…" she admitted after she had calmed down. "I'm sorry…I've just been worried about you two…" Riku grunted as he uncrossed his arms.

"Yeah, we know," He said, answering for both him and Sora, who still seemed to be in disbelief that Kairi hadn't reacted in a more negative fashion. "But don't worry, we're not leaving any time soon!"

"Yeah!" Sora added cheerfully as he put on one of his infamous "Sora smiles" and placed his hands behind his head. "We promised that we'd be together, and I'm gonna' stick with you to the end, Kairi!" The princess of heart smiled and nodded at Sora, some of his optimism having brushed off him and onto her. It was amazing how Sora could have that kind of effect on her, changing her from worried to cheerful and optimistic in mere seconds.

"You're right, nothing's going to separate us ever again!" she said as she held up her fist in a determined manner. "…But, you guys are still going to have to get some new clothes unless you intend to wear those for the rest of your lives…" Both boys groaned out loud when Kairi said this, they had both been hoping that their friendship speech would make her forget about dragging them around town in search of clothes. "Hey, c'mon, I'll make it up to you! We can go to the recreation island after we're through!"

"Then what are we waiting for?!" Sora abruptly exclaimed as he seized Kairi's hand in his and ran towards the closest store he could see. The keyblade master could act truly childish at time…but that was what had endeared him so much to his friends! That and his borderline mindless optimism.

"Sora!" Kairi exclaimed as she was practically dragged along. Her voice betrayed her true feelings, though; it was full of cheer and not the slightest hint of rebuke. "Calm down!" As quickly as he had grabbed her and run off, the keyblade master stopped, released her hand, and turned around to face Kairi, his facial expression was similar to the one a puppy give its owner when it knows that it's in trouble.

"Kairi, I'm-," Sora was interrupted when the princess of heart burst out laughing.

"S-sora, your face!" Kairi was barely able to stand as Sora looked at her with confusion before a smile crept out across his face. Just seeing Kairi laugh made him happy! After a few seconds of laughing, Kairi quieted down. "Wait…where's Riku?!" Sora suddenly jerked up and looked around behind him. While he was running pretty fast, there was no way that Riku could have possibly lost sight of he and Kairi unless he wasn't trying to catch up with them…

"I can't believe him!" Kairi pouted as she angrily put her hands on her hips. "He just ditched us!"

"Well…I'm still here!" Sora put on another goofy smile as he placed his hands behind his head. Kairi smiled as he did this, Sora really was one of a kind. Under almost all circumstances he was able to be optimistic, even cheerful. His antics simply caused his cheer to rub off on others and make everyone around him share in his optimism, even Riku was no exception to that!

"Yeah, well, I guess we'll just have to get back at Riku later…" a smirk crept across Kairi's face as some plot of some sort began to take shape in her mind.

"W-wait, you mean that we're going shopping…alone…together?!" Sora asked flabbergasted as a blush became visible across his face. A year ago he probably wouldn't have given spending time alone with Kairi a second thought, but now…

He had seen that Kairi had finished his drawing of him and her sharing a paopu in the secret place. When he first saw it, he was just barely able to stop himself from doing back flips, handstands, and God knows what other kinds of ways of showing his joy, but now, he couldn't help but feel incredibly nervous around Kairi, especially if he was alone with her.

"Sora, are you feeling well?" Kairi asked concernedly, completely ignoring Sora's question. "Your face is red…," at this, she placed her hand on his forehead in an attempt to gauge his temperature. Sora could feel even more heat rise to his cheeks as she did this. The fact that "butterflies" were rising up in his stomach did little to help him as he struggled to not do something that would make him look like an idiot.

"Er, I-I'm fine!" Sora exclaimed in a way that didn't exactly put Kairi at ease. Why did God just HAVE to make Kairi so angelic? He couldn't even stand having her touch his forehead to make sure that he was alright without internally falling apart. Sora really needed to work on that…sure; he could act "normally" around Kairi if they were on some kind of adventure or in a life or death situation, but the odds of something like that happening were one in a million!

The letter they had gotten from the king strengthened Sora's belief in that.

* * *

(flashback)

Riku and Kairi both flanked Sora as they began to gaze down at the letter the king had sent them. To say they were curious about its contents would be a candidate for understatement of the century!

_Dear Sora, Kairi, and Riku_

_I hope you fellas get this, sending notes in between worlds like this is tricky business! Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for all that you guys have done and gone through, but I also want to warn you guys to stay on guard. I don't know if Maleficent and Pete survived when those heartless started swarming them, but if they did, they could both cause a lot of trouble!_

_Maleficent did promise that she would try to get revenge on you after organization thirteen was defeated, and I wouldn't put it past her to try and use the people you care about to get at you, she knows that she can't beat any of you in a direct fight!_

Sora grinned a bit as he read this. During the week that the letter had taken to arrive on the Destiny Islands. Kairi had convinced both Sora and Riku to help train her in using her own keyblade, which she had yet to name. The princess of heart had been making rapid progress too, between Sora and Riku being good teachers and her ability to learn quickly, she was quickly rivaling them in terms of swordsmanship, even if she was somewhat lacking in the experience department. Still, if everything was quieting down, she wouldn't need the combat and magic lessons that Sora and Riku had given her, though only Sora was able to show her how to use magic since Riku relied on dark aura attacks rather than any kind of spell.

_I don't want to worry any of you, but please be careful. The darkness may not be inherently evil, but there are plenty of people who would be more than happy to manipulate the heartless's instincts for their own gain…_

_Anyway, I'm taking Donald and Goofy with me to see if Maleficent and Pete survived, so don't worry about being dragged off anywhere. Just enjoy the time you have now, but remember to watch your backs!_

_From, Mickey_

_P.S. Minnie says hi!_

"Well that's just great!" Riku muttered, clearly upset. "It hasn't been one month since we beat Xemnas, and some out there still wants to kill us!"

"Hey, the letter said that Pete and Maleficent probably didn't survive!" Sora chipped in optimistically as he folded up the letter and put it into one of the pockets of the magic clothes the three fairies had given him, the ones that he still wore everyday since he had gotten back from his last adventure. Obviously, he had to wash them A LOT more often than any other set of clothes that he ever had had….

"Sora's right, you shouldn't be so negative, Riku!" a certain princess of heart commented as she took several steps back so that she wasn't uncomfortably close to either of her to friends. Riku simply grunted in reply as he began to stalk off the islet that was his favorite training spot on the island.

"Figures that you'd take his side…"

"What'd you just say?!" Kairi demanded as she summoned her keyblade. She hadn't been able to hear Riku's accusation since he'd muttered it underneath his breath. Riku rolled his eyes and yelled "Nothing!" back to Kairi as he began to think come up with a list of places that he could brood without someone calling him an "emo boy". If Sora and Kairi wouldn't take any possible threats seriously, he would!

"You really shouldn't use it like that…" Sora stated in a careful manner, not wanting to get on Kairi's bad side. She just shrugged in reply as her keyblade vanished.

"Well it's not like I'm going to be able to use it for anything else anytime soon!"

--

"If you say so…" Kairi's words snapped Sora out of his little trip down memory lane. "But if you start to feel bad or anything, just tell me, okay…I don't want anything bad to happen to you because of me…" Kairi's view shifted form Sora to the ground, her choice of words was…embarrassing!

"Oh…uh…hey, c'mon!" Sora beamed happily as his blush began to fade away. He put his hands on Kairi shoulders, causing her head to jerk up in surprise so that she was looking straight into his face. "I'm fine, alright; nothing bad's going to happen!"

"Um, Sora…" Kairi shifted somewhat uncomfortably once Sora's proximity to her face became clear…not to mention that his hands were on her bare shoulders! The brunnetee tilted his head sideways in confusion before Kairi could literally see his eyes widen in a span of several seconds. He immediately detached his hands from her shoulders jumped back.

"AH! Kairi I…uh…I um…you…er…well…GAH!" to say that the keyblade master was freaking out would be an understatement. "…I'm sorry…" Sora finally seemed to have calmed down after almost ten seconds of his panicked expressions. To his immense surprise, he heard Kairi, of all things, giggling. Confused, Sora looked up at her.

"I-it's alright Sora…" Kairi said as the last of her giggles worked their way out of her system. "Don't worry about it!" Sora nodded and gave a shaky smile in response, there was something haunting him in the back of his head: was Kairi blushing? Her face did look just tiny bit flushed…though, that could have easily been the work of both the sun and her laughter. "So, are you ready?"

"Yeah, let's go!" as the two rushed off to get Kairi's shopping done, in Sora's case so that he and her could go to the recreation island after the trip was over, neither were aware that they were being watched by a certain smirking, silver haired friend of theirs, who was hiding in the shadows of one of the nearby buildings.

"Have fun you two…"

* * *

Riku was barely able to fight off the urge to scowl as he walked through the unofficial market district of Destiny Town. His improvised plan to get Sora and Kairi to spend some time alone with each other had gone along perfectly…except for one small detail…

He was bored out of his mind about now.

It was too easy to simply duck into a crowd of shoppers every time he had seen the pair during their trip, and even that mild source of excitement had been taken away from Riku. Sora and Kairi's little shopping trip was over, they had already left to drop off some of the bags that Sora had volunteered to carry for Kairi (and Riku knew exactly why Sora always acted so gentlemanly around her…) before they presumably ran off to go on their little island trip.

_'Damn it Sora…you better tell her how you feel soon…'_ While Riku didn't consider himself to really be a matchmaker, Sora and Kairi weren't about to get anywhere with each other unless he took some kind of action. Neither seemed to be able to summon the will to actually confess their feelings, it was almost as frustrating to Riku as it must have been to them, possibly even more so! He seriously wouldn't be able to live with himself unless he tried to get them to fess up to the best of his ability.

How could he call himself Sora and Kairi's friend if he just stood on the side lines while they tried to sort out their emotions! Still, that didn't change the fact that Riku had absolutely nothing to do now that they had run off. He couldn't go to the recreation island without the risk of spoiling Sora and Kairi's time together, and he couldn't just go back to his house and lay around all day, it was against his principles and it would be even more boring that blindly wondering the market district like he was now!

Out of boredom, Riku began kicking a small pebble that happened to be on the ground in front of him. The silver haired teenager wasn't really paying attention to where he was walking as he glumly trudged along, kicking the said pebble as he went. It wasn't until someone bumped into him, knocking both him and the said person right onto the ground.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" the girl, for the voice was feminine, cried out as two, fairly large brown paper bags fell to the ground along with Riku and her. The keyblade master grunted as he shifted his weight and twisted in such a way that he was able to stop himself from hitting the ground, and was able to regain his footing almost instantly.

As he stood up straight, he looked at the girl he had accidentally run into, mildly surprised at her appearance even though she had yet to look up or recover from her fall. She was dressed in a plain purple T-shirt, some non-descript shorts, and a pair of sneaker. Riku would have dismissed her as just a random person from the town, but for one reason.

She had white hair that reached past her shoulder by only an inch. While Riku didn't associate himself with every girl on the island, regardless of how many of them harbored crushes of varying degrees of secrecy on him, he was fairly certain that there were no white-haired girls on this world, especially considering that she looked to be his age. While he had been gone for a year, just like Sora, the odds of an exchange student coming during that time seemed to be quite remote…

Riku extended his hand towards her for her to take so that eh could help her up. As much as he hated to admit it, he was the one who had run into her because of his boredom, her apology and overall demeanor of politeness stirred up a pang of guilt in his chest.

"Hm? Oh, thank you, sir," The white haired teenager took his hand and got to her feet as he pulled her up off the ground, only to suddenly freeze when she saw Riku's face. He could almost see her blue eyes widen as an expression that Riku couldn't quite place made itself visible across her face. It seemed to be surprise mixed with…something else.

"Are you alright?" Riku asked, both concerned and a little disturbed by her reaction to him.

"Uh, y-yes!" the girl exclaimed nervously as she bent down and quickly picked up the tow bags that she had dropped in a hasty manner. "I have to go now, I'm in a hurry!" and without any further warning, she sprinted past Riku, nearly running into him a second time. The keyblade master stood there, confused for several seconds before he turned around, mentally shrugging. He would never understand girls…

Just as he was about to forget that the incident ever happened, his foot came down on something, causing a loud "crunch" sound to be made. Out of curiosity, he looked down to see that he had stepped onto a pack of boilable noodles. He reached down and picked it up, along with several more near it. The girl who he ran into must have accidentally dropped them when she fell.

"Hey, wait!" Riku called out in the direction that she had run off in. He then dashed off, intending to find her so that he could return the food she had bought, Riku was no gentleman, but he did have a set of unshakable morals! Still, he ran all the way out of town, and didn't see the slightest hint of the strange girl. "Damn…" he muttered to himself as he glanced down at the noodles. From the looks of things, he'd have to wait until later to find the strange teenage girl.

"Great, I've gone from hero to errand boy in just two weeks!" Riku moaned to himself as he put the noodles in his pocket for the sake on convenience. "…Well, at least it'll give me something to do…,"

* * *

While the keyblade masters were all occupied with their own problems, a certain white-haired sixteen year old was walking through the woods of one of the smaller and uninhabited islands among the chain that formed The Destiny Islands. She continued walking for about a minute before she came to a medium sized clearing.

In it, was a ship that was clearly meant for traveling between worlds. It was fairly generic, a rectangular shape with a cockpit at the front and four engines to propel it through space. The ship was fairly large, though not big enough to be spotted by anyone who happened to be passing by.

The girl wore a slight smile as she walked up a loading ramp and up to a metal door on the side of the ship. Placing one of the two grocery bags down on the ground, she reached out with her free hand and placed it against a small metal panel that was right next to the door. A few seconds later, an audible click rang out as the door swished open. The white-haired teenager picked up the bag that she had placed on the ground and entered the ship.

"Brother, I'm back!" The interior of the room was she was in was plain and metallic, only a few pieces of furniture, a table and four chairs, decorated it. Almost as soon as she had called, the girl's brother, who actually looked to be sixteen, the same age as his sister and Riku, appeared through one of the doors that led deeper into the ship.

He wore a black cap on his head that failed to conceal the silver hair that seemed to stream from it, testifying to his laziness. His hair was actually darker than Riku's though, it was almost gray! He wore a black jacket that was tattered around the edges as though someone had tried to trim them with a pair of scissors only to fail miserably and had sleeves that only reached down to his elbows. Underneath that, a white T-shirt was visible, for the jacket itself was unbuttoned. A pair of blue jeans and a pair of black, fingerless gloves completed the teenager's image of some kind of laid-back slacker…who happened to posses a keen sense of humor!

"Oh, hey, Maria!" he greeted with a casual wave as the white haired girl placed her groceries on the table. "Just out of curiosity, why do you have to call me "brother"? Can't you just call me "Dingo"? That's kinda my name y'know!" Maria smiled a bit as she looked up from the table and at her brother.

"I'm the one who bought the food we needed, so I think that means I can call you what I want…brother," Dingo held his hands up in mock defeat as he walked up to the table an began to casually inspect the contents of the two brown grocery bags.

"So, anything of interest happen in that town?" Maria was visibly caught off guard, though only for a second. Her ability to maintain her composure under nearly all circumstances was something that she took pride in.

"…No…nothing at all…" Dingo looked up from the groceries with a grin.

"The noodles you always get aren't here…something happened…" Maria mentally cursed herself. Dingo was a hell of a lot more intelligent than most people gave him credit for…that is, until it was too late for them to do anything about it!

"Um, well…brother, there's something I need to talk to you about, there was this boy in town…" Dingo's gave way to a round of laughs as he held his stomach whilehe slapped his knee.

"Oh my God! You, talking about a guy?! Ahahaha, that's the funniest thing ever, next to your choice of clothes for today, you really should hurry up and wash your normal outfit! He must be a heck of a dude to make you forget to buy the noodles…" Maria would have blushed if it wasn't for the fact that she had better control over herself than most…and if the situation wasn't as serious.

"I must have dropped them when he ran into me…brother, the "dude", as you called him, looked almost exactly like…like…_you-know-who_…," Instantly Dingo's laughter ceased as he stared at his sister in disbelief. "Yes…I was wondering if, well…maybe…," Dingo silenced her with a casual wave of his hand.

"No worries, sis! I've got plenty of time left!" Maria eyed him with suspicion, despite his cheerfulness. "Oh…you want proof?" When his sister nodded, Dingo sighed and took off the fingerless glove on his right hand, exposing a marking on his palm. It was the symbol of the nobodies, except that it was split down the middle and half of it was black while the other half was gold. It looked almost like a tattoo, and yet, it was clearly etched into his skin. Dingo seemed to concentrate and small sentence made of red letters hovered forth from the symbol on his hand.

'_You will die in seven days!'_ was what the almost holographic sentence said.

"Very funny, Dingo…," Maria said, almost in a hostile tone despite her customary politeness. "Now, how much time do you REALLY have left?" Dingo grinned sheepishly as he shrugged and waved away his prank-message. This time, an almost holographic timer counting down from thirty days, down to the last second, materialized, hovering above the symbol on his hand.

"See, plenty of time!" Maria, however, seemed less optimistic.

"Brother, it's your choice…you're the one who'll die if that timer runs out…well, you and Ale-," She was again silenced by a wave of Dingo's hand, though he was more violent this time. "…I'm sorry…I shouldn't have brought what happened up…"

"It's alright…" Dingo grinned weakly in an attempt to put on his façade of being an unconcerned jester once more. "I won't let either of us die…she'll be fine, just like I promised after I…got this thing…," he raised his right hand to show the symbol on it in order to illustrate his point. "Now, you can go back to town tomorrow to see that boy of yours…just make sure you don't forget to bring back the noodles!"

"Brother…." Maria was clearly touched, and yet regretful that she had talked Dingo into letting her go back in an attempt to see Riku just once more before they had to leave. "He only looks like…_you-know-who_…he isn't actually him…"

"Well then, you're still going to have to go back and get those noodles, because I won't be driving the ship until I get my ramen! Besides, all I have to do to get some more time is kill some nobodies! I mean, what's the worst that can happen? The whole town getting attacked by the wicked witch of the west?!"

Maria allowed herself to chuckle at her brother's joke. While she couldn't quite understand her need to see that boy that looked almost exactly like…_him_..., Ding seemed to understand it perfectly. Still, that was the least of her worries, she couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was going to happen because of her and Dingo's decision…and her hunches were usually correct, for better or for worse!

* * *

Okay, sorry about the lack of action, but I hope the fluff kept you satisfied! Anyway, please tell me what you think about this story so far. I'm not quite sure if it's on par with my other story, but the reviews will be appreciated all the same!

Just tell me what you think about it so far, from how I've been handling Sora and Kairi's relationship, to the personalities of my two OCs!


	2. Chapter 2: The Experiments

Notes: Okay, it's been awhile since I've updated this story, but I had a good reason for taking so long! School's kept me really busy these past weeks, and I just finished a really important chapter in my other story! Anyway, I'll stop blabbing so that you can start reading…and reviewing!

Seriously, reviews are really nice!

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone or anything except my own OCs!

* * *

Riku crossed his arms and fiddled with one of the packets of noodles in his pocket out of boredom as he waited for Sora and Kairi to show up. He was currently leaning against one of the many trees outside of Destiny Town. "Ugh, 'bout time!" he muttered to himself as his two best friends began to approach him in the distance. "So, how did your little island trip go?" Riku made absolutely sure that his tone didn't sound the least bit teasing, he already knew how Sora and Kairi felt about each other, and embarrassing them would only make them try to deny their feelings…though, since Sora was absolutely terrible at that sort of thing, then it might actually make them come clean…maybe.

"Oh, it went well!" Sora was obviously some what uncomfortable about the subject. "We, uh, we practiced with the keyblades, swam a little, and we…we watched the sun go down!" Riku couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as Sora tried to put on a goofy smile. While he doubted that Sora and Kairi had actually kissed or even admitted their feelings, the brunette was still embarrassed about something…probably watching the sunset with Kairi. Sora was utterly hopeless when it came to matters of romance!

"So, what were you doing, Riku?" Kairi had a hint of hostility in her voice as she crossed her arms. Riku mentally cursed, Kairi was a lot harder to fool than Sora was…and she knew how to hold grudges better than anyone else Riku cared to name.

"Oh, I was just-," before Riku could finish his sentence, a loud "crunch" was heard as he nervously squeezed one of the noodle packs that he had picked up yesterday. Part of the pack was visible for only a brief instant, but that was all Sora and Kairi needed to spot it.

"Huh, Riku, why do you have those noodles stuffed into your pocket?" Sora asked as he crouched down and pointed at the said packet. Inwardly, Riku swore as he saw Kairi's eyes lock onto the packet along with Sora's. He might, MIGHT, have been able to trick Sora into thinking that he had simply bought the bloody things, but Kairi wasn't so easily deceived. Granted, Sora wasn't stupid, he had effortlessly seen through Xemnas's attempt to play on everyone's sympathetic side, he was just too trusting.

Kairi, on the other hand, was a veteran of the dreaded "girl politics". When you have Selphie for a friend, you can't help but develop the ability to tell when someone's fibbing…or secretly plotting to try and pair you up with some guy….Selphie's romantic streak could get rather annoying for everyone.

"…I ran into a girl yesterday and-,"

"Wait, you met a girl?!" Kairi's eyes flashed with triumph and a hint of malice. To anyone else, she would have looked as innocent (and in Sora's opinion, angelic), but Riku knew very well that she was trying to get even with him for ditching her and Sora without a warning. "Riku, I had no idea that you-,"

"She was a complete stranger!" the silver haired keyblade master couldn't help but raise his voice at Kairi's unfinished accusation. He didn't give Kairi the satisfaction of him blushing, partly because his pride wouldn't allow it and partly because of the fact that nothing embarrassing had actually happened…unless you count Riku not paying attention to where he was going. Kairi raised her hands in mock surrender while Sora took a step back in surprise.

"You don't have to yell at Kairi!" Riku mumbled a quick apology, making sure that no one other than his two best friends could hear. Sora had become quit protective of Kairi, but who could blame him? After all that he went through trying to save her, how could he not be as protective of her as she was of him? "It's alright, Riku." Sora beamed happily while he adopted the semi-infamous "Sora pose", putting his hands behind his head and reclining slightly. "So, Kairi, what were we going to do in town? I kinda forgot…sorry!"

Kairi smiled at Sora while she put her hand up to her chin in thought. "Well, I was actually hoping that we would run into Riku like this…," The silver haired keyblade master barely managed to suppress the urge to gulp as Kairi said this, it meant that she already had some kind of plot in mind. "Riku, would you mind turning around for a second?" He and Sora both looked at Kairi, confused, before he shrugged and did as she asked. Riku felt Kairi's fingernail lightly jab into his back, just below where his hair reached.

"Riku, school's going to start soon and you're going to need a haircut…," Surprisngly, it was Sora, not Riku, who moaned in complaint.

"Kairi, do you have to talk about school while we're still having our summer vacation?" The brunette sagged his shoulders in an exaggerated manner, nearly causing Kairi to giggle out loud at his antics. Instead, she playfully flicked his forehead and affectionately muttered "lazy bum", her personal nickname for Sora that only she was allowed to use.

"Still, you have to admit, Riku DOES need a haircut….," Before he could even react, Riku found his arms semi-jokingly pinned behind his back by his two friends, both of whom were grinning like crazy.

"Let me go…," was all Riku was able to say as he struggled to prevent a grin from forming on his face at Sora and Kairi's little prank. Granted, the two could be immature and annoying at times, but they were still his friends.

"Hmmm….nope!" Sora's smile was bright, thought it held a hint of mischief in it. "Kairi's right, you DO need a haircut…,"

* * *

Sora and Kairi stood, waiting, just outside the barber shop that they had practically forced Riku into. Despite the air of casualness that the whole world seemed to be giving off, a certain brunette couldn't help but feel nervous now that he was technically alone with Kairi. While it was true that the town had a fair number of people walking about in their daily routine, Sora's definition of "alone", now that he was back home, was when Riku wasn't around. He wasn't able to suppress a nervous gulp as he stole a quick glance up at Kairi.

Ever since he and Riku had gotten back, Kairi had been…different…somehow. It wasn't the way she acted or even personality, but something about her seemed to make Sora almost ridiculously nervous and giddy around her. Perhaps it was the fact that she had completed his drawing of him and her sharing a paopu fruit in the secret place? When he saw that she had completed that crud drawing of his, Sora had felt like he was about to collapse and like doing triple back flips out of joy at the same time. Obviously, the brunette hadn't dared to bring the issue up with Kairi, it could just have been one of her little pranks (though if it was it would have been uncharacteristically cruel of her, not that Sora would acknowledge that) for all he knew!

"Sora, is something wrong?" his head jerked up as Kairi looked his way with a concerned expression on her face. "You've just been so quiet…,"

"Um, y-yeah, I'm fine!" Sora replied as he flashed Kairi a cheesy grin. Unfortunately, the princess of heart knew him too well to be deceived…not to mentions that Sora was terrible at lying. The keyblade master felt butterflies rise up in his stomach as Kairi placed her hand on his forehead. It felt so cool in contrast to the hot summer air, whether it was Sora's imagination or just something Kairi somehow managed to do during her "girl time" was unknown to him. Unfortunately for the already giddy brunette, the sun happened to shine on Kairi's hair, illuminating it in such a way that she appeared even more angelic than she usually did.

Sora simply couldn't help himself as he did something that, if he were in his right mind, he would be kicking himself in the rear for. He gaped, and stared at Kairi in awe. "S-sora?" Kairi's call partially snapped him out of his stupor. "You really are sick aren't you? Why didn't you tell me?!" Kairi's bizarre mix of concern and anger manifested itself when she lightly shook Sora by his shoulders.

A wave of guilt ran over Sora as he was instantly driven out of his sense of awe by Kairi's concern for him. He hadn't truly done anything wrong, but he still felt terrible for hurting Kairi like this simply because he couldn't keep his…feeling for her under check. "Kairi…," he mumbled, attracting her attention as she looked him straight in the face. His arms rose slightly as the urge to hug her, to take her in his arms and comfort and assure her that everything was fine, like he had when she and he were reunited on The World that Never Was, was almost irresistible. "I'm fine, really!"

"Not for long though, I'm afraid." Instantly Sora froze as an all too familiar voice echoed out throughout the town. Kairi jumped back, summoning her unnamed keyblade out of reflex as she did so, with an angry expression on her face. Sora too summoned his keyblade as he ran away from the barber shop and then turned around to confirm his worst fear.

"Maleficent!" The grey skinned sorceress grinned in her haughty manner from atop the barber shop; presumably she had used either her magic or a corridor of darkness to get there. The only thing about her that seemed different was the fact that she didn't have her annoying crow familiar on her shoulder. Actually, it was nowhere to be seen!

"I don't think I need to tell you why I'm here…" Maleficent said as her eyes seemed to scan the town and everyone in it. The townspeople were currently gaping in shock and awe, Sora, Riku, and Kairi's adventures weren't public knowledge and it wasn't everyday that someone just popped out of nowhere…literally in Maleficent's case. "Hm, where's Riku, I wonder? He didn't lose himself to the darkness AGAIN, did he?" As if to answer her, the roof suddenly seemed explode right behind her as the silver haired keyblade master erupted out of the building. Maleficent barely managed to get out of the way of Riku's strike, though the force of his blow against her staff knocker the sorceress clean off the building.

"You have a lot of nerve coming here…," Riku angrily growled as he brandished The Way to Dawn. From the looks of thing, the barber had somehow finished the hair cut as Riku's hair was now the same length that it was when he, Sora, and Kairi were all normal children. It was a great improvement over the incredibly long hair that he had previously.

Maleficent seemed to smirk as a medium sized platform made of darkness formed underneath her feet, stopping her from hitting the ground. "And you have a lot of "nerve" to address the future ruler of all the worlds like that!"

"Aren't you forgetting what happened the last time we fought?" Sora demanded as Maleficent's platform floated in the airs, in the middle of all three keyblade wielders. Maleficent glared down at Sora, but knew that he had a point. Until Riku, or rather, Xehanort's heartless, unleashed the darkness in her heart, she had been a rather feeble opponent to Sora, Donald, and Goofy. While the servants of the king were certainly tough, they were quite a bit weaker than the keyblade masters.

"No, I haven't forgotten…but this time will be different…," Maleficent tapped her staff on the dark platform several times and then stopped with a satisfied expression on her face. Instantly, a small army of heartless teleported into the town, surrounding the area the combatants were in. They were all of the weaker variety, shadows, soldiers, and armored knights. The keyblade masters could have taken them out without breaking a sweat…if they were the targets of the heartless attack. "Tell me, are you arrogant enough to think that you can defend your precious town, along with everyone in it, AND defeat me at the same time?"

Riku growled ferociously in anger as he leapt at Maleficent with his keyblade aimed for her heart. The dark sorceress raised a shield of green fire to block Riku's attack even as he flew through the air towards her. The keyblade and shield collided with a flash, though Riku was forced to leap away when he heard Sora and Kairi call for him. Insult was added to injury as he broke off his attack, he could have easily broken that shield if it wasn't for the heartless attacking the town!

"Riku, we need your help!" Sora yelled as he cut an armored knight heartless in half, causing it to dissipate and release a heart instantly. Kairi shot of several thundara spells, her magic abilities weren't quite on par with Sora's yet, as she too tried to drive the heartless away from the townspeople. It was utter chaos as the two leapt from person to person, driving away the heartless that assailed them in the process.

With a practiced movement, Sora brought his keyblade down upon an unlucky shadow as it tired to rip one of the townspeople's hearts out. He was about to cut down yet another heartless when the ground next to him suddenly erupted in an explosion. Sora managed to roll out of the way. But he clutched his leg in pain when he felt the burn on it. Hovering above him was Maleficent on her platform; a triumphant expression marked her features. Apparently she wasn't above taking potshots at anyone who happened to be too distracted to pay attention to her. Sora was barely able to roll out of the way as she rained a storm of green fire down upon him, not giving the keybearer a chance to cast a healing spell to fix his currently burned and crippled leg.

"Sora!" Maleficent's attacks were suddenly stopped when the sorceress was forced to raise a shield to block several ice spells that were casted from the tip of Kairi's keyblade. Sora immediately healed his leg with a spell and was about join in Kairi's assault against Maleficent when his attention was drawn by Riku calling for him and Kairi. The heartless had renewed their assault on the town, and Riku was unable to go all out without harming the very people he was trying to defend.

"Sora, we can't beat her and the heartless!" the brunette gritted his teeth at Kairi's statement. She was right; they would be able to easily take down both the heartless and Maleficent if it wasn't for the fact that they had to protect the town. It was just too much. Just as the three keyblade masters began to hack and slash at the heartless once more, an ice spell sailed over their heads, forcing Maleficent back before she could try and harm any of them again.

"I'll keep her busy, just protect the people!" Riku's head jerked up in recognition as Sora and Kairi took a second to see who was helping them.

"You?!" Riku exclaimed. Indeed, it was the girl from yesterday; however, she now wore a loose-fitting white robe, underneath which was an equally white tank top and pair of long pants. In her right hand was a bizarre weapon that resembled a futuristic spear, and yet had some kind of crystal that clearly had mystic origins. She turned to look at Riku, a spark of recognition showed in her eyes before it was almost instantly concealed.

"My name is Maria, but we don't have time for introductions!" And with that, the white haired girl sprinted towards Maleficent, casting numerous ice spells as she did so.

"Riku, do you know her?" Kairi asked as she stabbed at a nearby soldier heartless, easily killing it.

"…She's that girl I ran into yesterday…," Riku grunted back as he finished off yet another armored knight with a diagonal slash.

"Huh…I wonder why she would need to buy noodles?" Sora asked, utterly destroying several shadow with a firaga spell. "I mean, it just seems weird that a mage would just walk into town to buy some noodles…," Riku rolled his eyes at Sora while Kairi giggled a bit. Despite his own experiences as a hero, Sora still held some of the idealized views of anyone he considered to be a "hero", meaning someone with above average fighting ability that goes around fighting evil. It was completely foreign to the brunette's nature to think that a mage would walk into town to buy noodles of all things!

By now most of the townspeople had escaped thanks to the combined and uninterrupted efforts Sora, Kairi and Riku, which meant the three keyblade masters could concentrate solely on finishing off the last of the heartless that still remained. Despite himself, Sora couldn't help but feel the pent up anger rising to the surface as he dodged, weaved, parried, and stuck at all the heartless around him. They had dared to invade his home and completely ruin his time with his friend that he had been trying reunite with for over a year…even if the majority of it was spent inside a sleeping pod…

At the memory of the sleep pod, and by extension the REAL Ansem, otherwise known as DiZ, Sora's anger seemed to double. While he didn't fully understand it himself, the part of him that was Roxas was somehow having an effect on him. DiZ had done some horrible things to Sora's nobody just so that he could get even with organization thirteen…and despite the former ruler of Radiant Garden's apology, the part of Roxas in Sora still hadn't forgiven him, not by a long shot. In his subconscious, Sora knew that Roxas's grudge primarily stemmed from his willingness to simply "dispose" of Namine the second she restored Sora's memories…apparently Sora and Kairi's nobodies were just as close as their somebodies, even if they had fused with them.

As such, it wasn't until Kairi was literally shaking Sora by his shoulders that he snapped out of his blind anger at the heartless. "Sora, that girl needs our help now!" Now suddenly aware of what was going around him, Sora looked past Kairi's shoulder to see Maleficent and Maria exchanging a volley of spells. Maria was perspiring and was clearly tiring magically, whereas Maleficent seemed only slightly tired. It took only a second for Sora to realize Maria's mistake, she tried to take Maleficent on in an arena that she could dominate: magic. Even for Sora, going toe to toe with Maleficent using magic only was suicidal.

"We have to help her!" Sora nodded at Kairi as they both gripped their keyblades and began to charge toward the dueling magic users. They were quickly joined by Riku, who had just finished off the last of the heartless attacking the town. Maleficent glanced at the approaching keyblade masters and raised her free hand towards them, causing a multitude of heartless to appear right in front of them. They heartless were nothing more than a distraction; her plan had failed all because of the white haired girl in front of her. The black sorceress bombarded Maria's magic shield with green fire, if she couldn't have her revenge on the keyblade masters, then she would just make do with the one who had interfered…

The shield Maria had raised collapsed underneath the force of the green fireballs, though Maria raised her spear-staff and deflected them, though she did it with less skill than she had exhibited when casting spells. Maria was already tired from her magic duel with Maleficent, and the fireballs that she was deflecting were physically tiring her as well. After a few more seconds of this, the white-haired mage sank to her knees, unable to continue on anymore. Maleficent smirked as she began to form a particularly large fireball with which to completely incinerate Maria.

Suddenly a gunshot rang out for all to hear as a rather cocky looking teenager stood on a neaby rooftop and held a pistol aimed at Maleficent's head…which currently had one of its two horns shot off. "Nobody touches my sister except me…wait, that didn't sound right…,"

* * *

Despite his sudden embarrassment at his choice of words, Dingo still kept up his cocky demeanor in an attempt to save some face. It wasn't too hard for the silver haired teen to guess who was on his and Maria's side in this fight. The three teenagers with the weird key…sword…thingies… were obviously against the wicked bitch of the west, as Dingo had mentally dubbed Maleficent, and the heartless were obviously on the side of the hag who dared to try to murder his sister. "Hey, Maria, are you alright?" Dingo yelled while he kept his pistol trained on Maleficent. "Sorry I didn't bring anything bigger than this pistol, I just didn't think that the wicked bitch of the west would actually try to attack town with her monkey army or whatever!"

The brunette with the outrageous hairdo burst out laughing, causing a satisfied smirk to spread out across Dingo's face. It was so much fun irritating your enemies and making people laugh…not to mention it gave the large thing between his ears some workout! (A/N: in other words, his brain)

"HOW DARE YOU ADDRESS ME IN SUCH A WAY, YOU MINDLESS FOOL!" Maleficent roared, all of herself composure seemed to have been thrown to the winds. Her face was contorted in pure rage while a green aura seemed to emanate off her. Despite the sense of dread and fear that he had bitten off a little more than he could chew setting in his stomach, Dingo still managed to maintain his air of cockiness.

"Well, you seem oddly familiar with swear-words for and elegant lady…I wonder why that is?" Maleficent was about to open her mouth, whether it was to yell a comeback or cast a spell would never be known, only to be interrupted when Kairi suddenly lunged at air, nearly knocking the witch off the platform. As Kairi landed on the ground, Maleficent raised the platform too high in the air for any of the keyblade masters to directly striker her.

"You'll regret your insolence…," Maleficent raised her staff and shot off a sizable fireball towards Dingo, nearly burning him to death as he made a rather impressive jump to the rooftop neighboring his.

"Ah shit….," The rooftop he had been standing on earlier burst into flames even as the three people with the key-swords casted several ice spells to put it out. "Right…hey, you stupid old hag, I'm over here!" Dingo then smacked his own posterior once a taunting manner to make sure he had Maleficent's undivided attention. "Catch me if you can…and you three better look Maria!" With that, Dingo began to sprint off towards the one place that was guaranteed to have absolutely no people in it…the woods. If Maleficent was as smart as Dingo believed himself to be, then she would know that setting them on fire would be a mistake, the smoke would obscure her view of where Dingo was among the not-so-tightly packed trees.

Still, the whole thing was a large gamble, even as the silver haired young man fired over his shoulder with his pistol, only to have a fire-shield made by Maleficent block every single bullet that came her way. Dodging the occasional fireball as he ran, Dingo soon reached a small clearing in the woods, taking cover behind one of the trees as he gripped his pistol with both hands. He still had a fair amount of ammunition left, but he was obviously out of his league. Dingo glanced down at his right hand, where the nobody symbol-like tattoo was located, before he shook his head to himself. THAT was only a last resort…even if his life might depend on it, Dingo wasn't about to use the power of the seal unless he absolutely had to…

"Well, all I have to do is sneak back into the town and get those guys with the keys to help…they seemed pretty tough with all that swordplay…gah! Who would have thought that one little trip to make sure your little sis is doing alright could turn into this?!" Shrugging, Dingo moved out from behind the tree and then spun around when he heard a twig snap nearby. He was blasted straight into the very center of the clearing by a green fireball, too stunned to do anything but lay there.

Maleficent came striding out, a satisfied expression written all over her face, Dingo wasn't aware of dark corridors and their ability to transport someone wherever they wished, and Maleficent had used the to her advantage. "I may not be getting my revenge on Sora just yet, but I can make do with you…," She raised her staff slightly to cast one last fireball that would kill the silver haired troublemaker. It was then that Dingo did something she never would have expected. He seemed to concentrate for a brief second, and then a white sword-shaped object that seemed to be made out of energy materialized in his right hand. Dingo jerked up, holding his pistol in his left hand, and struck at Maleficent, nearly knocking her backward as she tried to avoid the blow.

Her eyes widened in surprise at Dingo's attack, the spectral sword had a rather large blade, and it didn't take a genius to find out what would happen if Dingo could hit her with it. Still, he raised his pistol up at Maleficent and fired, this time a fairly large globe of white energy exploded out of the pistol instead of bullets. The sorceress raised another one of her fire-shields, only to have a faction of the shot knock her into one of the trees behind her.

"And there's a lot more where that came from, you stupid old hag!" Dingo wore a smirk as he brushed his cap with his pistol before pointing it back at Maleficent in warning. She didn't need to be told twice to get the message. A dark door opened up behind her as she venomously glared at Dingo.

Not one second after Maleficent's retreat, the spectral blade vanished as Dingo put his pistol in his holster and tore off the fingerless glove on his right hand to check the timer in the palm of his hand. "What?! Ten days?!" The timer, which had been counting down from thirty days only yesterday, was now counting down from nineteen. "You've got to be kidding me! That energy blast wasn't THAT big!" An almost panicked expression was on Dingo's face as he stared down at the symbol on his hand. "…I knew that using it to make me faster for that one attack was pushing it…," The sudden sounds of foot falls and twigs breaking prompted him to quickly put on his glove once more and spin around to face the source of the noise. "Huh? Oh, it's you guys…,"

Before him was Maria and the trio that had been fighting the heartless in the town while his sister had been keeping the wicked bitch of the west busy.

"Yes it's us…," The tallest, a silver-haired boy, said as he crossed his arms. "I think you owe us some answers…,"

* * *

Sora's eyes nearly fell out of his head when he tasted the noodles that Maria had cooked for the entire group onboard her and her brother's ship. "This…is…the best food I've ever tasted!" he yelled out as he began to try to wolf down the entire bowl, despite Kairi lightly hitting him on the shoulder for his lack of etiquette. Immediately after they had found Dingo in the clearing, he and Maria had lead Sora, Kairi, and Riku to their ship as part of their explanation for what they were doing on the Destiny Islands when they were obviously from another world. Maria had proved to be a first-rate cook; even Riku had to admit her noodles were better than anything his mom had ever made…and that was a huge compliment coming from Riku!

"Thank you, I worked really hard on it," Maria responded with a small smile as she took a seat at the table everyone was eating at.

"Wait, aren't you going to eat any?" Riku asked as he looked up from his food.

"No…I hate before I left the ship to buy some more noodles…," As Riku turned his gaze back to his food, he could have sworn that Maria's eyes seemed to linger on him for a second longer than normal before she turned her attention to Kairi. "So, Kairi, what's it like living on an island? It seems like it's a lot of fun." Kairi shrugged in reply as she put down her eating instruments to have a conversation with Maria.

"It's nice but it's not really that exciting…say, you act like you've never been to a beach before, what was your world like?" Riku and Sora looked up from their food now that something they were actually interested in was being discussed. They were both curious about Dingo and Maria's story, though for different reasons. Sora was just curious in a good naturedly way while Riku was suspicious about the pair. Maria's face remained neutral as she seemed to be searching for words to describe where she and Dingo came from, though her eyes seemed to flicker for a brief millisecond.

"Oh c'mon!" Dingo loudly exclaimed from where he sat as he stood and picked up his bowl. "You're the ones who can summon key-swords-,"

"Um, keyblades," Sora corrected as he looked up at Dingo.

"Right, keyblades, out of thin air, and you want us to bore you to death with our life stories? If you don't mind, I think Maria would find your stories a lot more interesting than a few childhood memories. Besides, we'll be parting ways before tomorrow, so why bother getting overly acquainted?"

"Actually, I think we'll be sticking together for another day or two…," Riku stated as he leaned back in his chair slightly. He was met by a collective "Huh?" from everyone except Maria who simply looked both surprised and puzzled…and maybe even a little happy.

"Riku, why would we want to burden them down with us?" Kairi asked, her concern for people she was even only vaguely acquainted with showing. Maria was about to open her mouth to sat some polite remark that the three keyblade masters weren't a burden, or at least words to that effect.

"Because, I think the king would like to know that Maleficent survived those heartless back on The World that Never Was and that she's back to stirring up trouble…," Sora and Kairi hesitated and then nodded in agreement. It was hard to just drop everything and run off on what might turn into yet another world-saving adventure. "Don't worry, we can tell our parents that we have to leave, they won't stop us, especially after they see what Maleficent did to the town, and we'll be back in a day or two depending on how fast this ship can go."

Kairi seemed far more hesitant than Sora about the issue. Riku was right that her adoptive parents wouldn't stop her from leaving, and even if they did try to stop her, what could they do when she could unlock any door she wanted to at will? "Well…alright…but only if it's okay with Dingo and Maria…," Dingo was about to open his mouth to respond, but Maria beat him to the punch.

"Yes, it's perfectly alright, right Dingo?" Her face maintained it's pleasant expression as she turned her head towards her brother, but her eyes seemed to harden, almost daring him to contradict her. If anything, Dingo seemed surprised at his sister's sudden fire, but he simply flicked his black cap and grinned a bit.

"Sure, but you'll have to sort out the sleeping arrangements, no one's getting my room!" Maria nodded back with one of her smiles as she seemed to be trying to suppress a round of chuckles.

"Of course, brother…I doubt any of them would want to spend even a minute in your room!" Dingo grinned as he gave a cocky salute to everyone in the room before he entered one of the metal doors, leaving the said piloting and sleeping arrangements up to everyone else.

* * *

The moment Dingo entered his room, his entire demeanor changed from humerous adns sociable to seemingly cold and introspective. "Sarah, would you please dispose of this?" he asked as he looked about his quarters. Large computers and all kinds of mechanical devices hugged the wall, except in a place where a bunk seemed haphazardly placed, as if it were nothing more than an afterthought. At the very end of the room was a large pod-like machine, big enough to fit a person into.

In response to Dingo's request, a flying machine, about the size of a football and shaped like a disc, flew up to Dingo's hands before shooting a small laser at the bowl of noodles that seemed to vaporize it. A blue hologram of a young woman with hair that reached down to the middle of her back and wore simple white dress materialized on the top side of the disk. She would have vaguely reminded Sora of something from Tron's world. "Interesting guests we're having,"

"Oh, you were looking at them from the security cameras, weren't you?" Dingo replied as he took a seat at one of the computers near the pod. "Any change in status while I was gone?" Sarah shook her holographic head in reply.

"No, but the heart synchronization rate did increase slightly." Dingo scowled as he stared at the computer screen and the massive amounts of data on it. There was enough stuff on it to rival the one Ansem used when he imprisoned Roxas in the virtual Twilight Town. He began to quickly type through several more of the screens before he came back to the one he had been originally looking at.

"Well, it's an improvement…but we're nowhere near done…," He looked in a somewhat depressed manner towards the pod before her pulled his cap down so that it covered his eyes.

"…Need something to read to take your mind off…_her_?" Sarah asked, a measure of concern coming through her voice. "Just remember to get some sleep and don't stay up all night like you did last time…" Dingo rolled his eyes as some of his playfulness returned.

"Sure thing, Mom," he replied semi-sarcastically. Sarah was the closest thing to a mother figure he and had ever had. "Hm…I know…let me take a look at those profiles that pops made of me and the gang back in the good old days…," Dingo's voice abruptly changed to a bitter and sarcastic tone as he spun his chair a bit to face Sarah, who was hovering next to him. Hesitation played out across the holographic woman's features before she was replaced by a series of names. It was only the first page of several, but it was clear they were the names Dingo was interested in.

_List of experimental subjects in section A. Subjects are organized by date of creation, from eldest to youngest. (note: Biological ages are not to be used to sort the experimants anymore, they nearly caused a computor shut down due to the parodoxes involved)_

_Experiment 50: Alex "The Guardian"_

_Experiment 58: Nero "The Protector"_

_Experiement 61: Lucian "The Tormentor"_

_Experiment 70: Dingo "The Machinator"_

_Experiment 71: Maria "The Deceiver"_

Dingo snorted a bit as he moved his hand over the names and titles, memories began to flow through his mind. "Ah…good ole' pops always did have a negative opinion of me…I guess he didn't like have someone around who could plan stuff out on the same level he could…,"

There was a whir and a click from Sarah as Dingo touched his name, causing a hologram of him in a uniformed combat suit to pop up alongside a personality assessment and various other statistics. The suit was clearly designed for "modern" warfare, that is, warfare via guns instead of "outdated" weapons like swords.

"Hm…maybe that title of mine is appropriate…I guess all of ours are…or were in Nero's case…,"

* * *

Ok, so now you have a vague idea as to what Maria and Dingo's pasts were like. Anyway, things are going to (hopefully) be heating up in the next chapter since I'll be setting up who's trying to bring chaos and ruin to the worlds this time…other than Maleficent that is.

Sorry for taking so long to update, the finals at school we murder! I haven't had time for ANYTHING else until now. Oh, and Mooncry, if you read this chapter, yes, this Nero and the Nero in that RP are indeed the same…more or less…I just wanted to thank you for giving me the idea of putting him in one of my stories earlier.

Review please! It keeps me going and it only takes a few seconds of your time! I promise I'll reply (I always do).

P.S. In case you don't know or if I spelled it wrong, "Machinator" is basically another word for schemer, or something along those lines. A maker of machinations…that's what Dingo's title accuses him of being…


	3. Chapter 3: The Tormentor

Notes: Ok, I was originally going to update my humor/romance story instead of this, but I'm suffering from a bit of writer's block for it, so I'm just going to focus on this and "The Heart of Darkness" until I can think of something.

Well, Time for the disclaimer and the story! I have a special guest up here for the former; he'll get introduced at the end of this chapter!

Mystery person: Why thank you, Rogue! It feels so good to be out and about again! starts spinning a knife around in his hand you wouldn't believe the kind of things I've been doing to keep myself busy!

Rogue: Eheheh, yeah…and I probably don't want to know the details…could you, uh…do the disclaimer…please? braces for a knife in the stomach…or worse

Mystery person: Why most assuredly, I haven't been this excited over something since…well, that thing me and the good ole' gang did back on our own world before you started this fic…you know, the one where I took a knife and used it to-

Rogue: DISCLAIMER! goes off to puke at the thought of just what he did that involved a knife and a poor, unlucky person that is now deceased

Mystery person: sighs Ah, some people just don't understand…oh well! Rogue here owns nothing but his OCs and any places he makes up…and now, dear reader...draws numerous knives out of nowhere and holds each in-between his fingers what fun we shall have together…

* * *

Sora's eyes were shut as he slowly fell through the air into what seemed to be an endless abyss of some sort. Surprisingly, he was content there, just sitting there and resting felt good in comparison to having to fight for his life every five minutes of his life. Sora's descent into the seemingly endless darkness was slowly halted as his feet gently brushed against something as an invisible force slowly pulled him upright. Suddenly, light shot out from where he stood, revealing an all too familiar stain-glass platform…and a certain blonde nobody standing at the opposite edge.

"R-roxas?!"

The blonde nobody smirked and waved at his somebody. Roxas was dressed in his twilight town outfit. "Hey, Sora, welcome to dreamland…like what I've done with the place?" The brunette keblade master stood there for a brief, puzzled at Roxas's words, before he glanced down and saw what his nobody meant. The stain glass platform that he and Roxas stood on had changed significantly since the last time he had been here. It had him and Roxas back to back in the middle of the circular platform, effectively dividing it in two. Sora's half was unchanged; it maintained its blue color scheme with circles that held Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy's heads in them.

Roxas's half, in sharp contrast, was a kind of orange color that reminded Sora of twilight. The first thing Sora noticed was a rather large heart –shaped symbol that held a portrait of Namine's smiling face right 

next to Roxas's head on the platform. Orbiting it were circles that contained portraits of the Twilight Town gang, in other words Hayner, Pence, and Ollette. As impressive as it was, Sora couldn't help but wonder why Roxas had suddenly decided to talk to him like this. Sure the nobody had communicated with Sora ever since they were joined, but he had never actually drawn Sora into his own mind while he was asleep!

"Wow…you really like Namine, don't you?" asked Sora after he fully took in his surroundings. This whole thing was rather abrupt and sudden…not to mention just plain unexpected! Obviously, Sora wasn't quite sure what to say to his other half.

Roxas grinned sheepishly in reply as he rubbed the back of his impossibly spiky hair in embarrassment. "Well yeah…I mean…we have spent a lot of time together while you and Kairi were busy…hey, don't act all surprised, we are your nobodies after all!" Now it was Sora's time to be embarrassed. While he knew it was futile to deny his not-so-little crush on Kairi to Roxas, since the blonde was technically him, it was still embarrassing even hear his deepest and darkest secret out loud…even if it wasn't much of a secret!

"So…uh…why did you want to talk to me like this?"

Roxas's whole demeanor suddenly became serious rather than joking and embarrassed. "It's about that Dingo guy you met…there's something about him that's…off. I don't quite sure how to explain it, his heart just gave off a…different aura than any other I've ever felt."

All Roxas got was a confused look from Sora in reply. "Look, it's a nobody thing. When you're trying to get a heart when you don't have one, you tend to become aware of these kinds of things…it's actually kind of ironic, nobodies are more empathic than normal people even though they lack emotion."

"Um, Roxas, what's "empathic" mean?" the blond nobody chuckled a bit to himself when Sora just grinned in a sheepish manner at his own bad vocabulary. Roxas represented a lot of the things Sora wasn't, the things he'd suppressed on the inside…his academic ability being one of them.

"Sorry, you're on your own there!" Before Sora could protest about Roxas being tight-lipped, the whole platform seemed to shake as both Sora and his nobody struggled to stay on their feet.

"Wh-what's going on?!"

Roxas grunted and scowled a bit as the platform began to crumble and fade away right underneath his feet. "Ugh, apparently, Riku needs to talk to you about something so important that he snuck into your room and decided to wake you up early!" Before Sora could do anything, or question his nobody further, a bright flash of light blinded him as the sensation of falling and hitting the ground reverberated throughout his entire body.

* * *

"Sora, wake up already!" the brunette keyblade master groaned and feebly tried to push the hands that were shaking him away. As creepy as the thought of Riku breaking into his room was, he had done crazier things before…when your best friend chooses darkness over you and then tries to kill you multiple times for no good reason, then you tend to not be surprised by anything as mild in comparison as this.

"Riku…just five more minutes…" Sora rolled over to his side, away from Riku. Despite Roxas's entire chat with him, and Riku deeming whatever it was that was bothering him important enough to wake Sora up early, there was no changing the fact that Sora was a lazy bum at heart. Kairi's nickname for him truly was the most appropriate one anyone had ever given him!

Riku simply grunted in annoyance to Sora's refusal to get up, but he did stop trying to shake him awake. "Fine…it's just 5:30…go on ahead and sleep the whole day away…just make sure that you get Kairi out of her house before her parents wake up…you know how her dad's going to react if she tries to explain that she has to go off-world AGAIN."

Sora nodded a bit as he somehow managed stay alert enough to take in Riku's words. "I already wrote my parents a note, Kairi's probably done the same, so that just leaves you…Sora, you aren't going to impress her if you keep forgetting stuff like that…"

The brunette just nodded again. "Mhm…wait, WHAT?!" Sora literally bolted up from his bed, clad in his blue pajamas, just in time to see Riku jumping out of his now-unlocked window with a smirk on his face. A rather red-faced Sora ran up to it, but Riku was already long gone. All that time in the darkness had made him nearly impossible to catch when he was on the prowl, even with his distinctive silver hair! The fact that Riku could now unlock anything, including Sora's window on the second floor of his house, didn't help things either.

"Ugh…alright, you win…" Sora admitted to himself as he rubbed the last bits of sleep from his eyes and moved to get dressed. Riku knew exactly how to wake Sora up and make him unable to go back to sleep…one comment about him liking Kairi was all it took and then the rest of Sora's night was ruined!

It was impossible to go to sleep with all the energy he would have to use to avoid thinking and dreaming about a certain auburn-haired angel!

* * *

Riku cautiously eyed his surroundings as the small boat he had rowed to the deserted island that Dingo and Maria landed their ship on was finally beached. It was a habit that he had picked up during the days he spent wondering around the realm of darkness. While he didn't have his keyblade at the time, and thus wasn't swarmed and overwhelmed out of fear by the heartless, he still did have to put up with the creatures of darkness almost constantly. He was in their realm and he constantly rejected the darkness, what else could their reaction have been? Even now that he didn't have to put up with heartless attacks, Riku still couldn't help but remain alert in any place that it was dark.

A few seconds later, Riku began to make his way down the small path that would guide him to Dingo and Maria's ship. They seemed nice enough people, but the ever suspicious Riku just couldn't help but be somewhat wary around them. Apart from simply having a bit of a suspicious and cynical side to him ever since being possessed, there were some unanswered questions about the pair. Why were they just drifting between worlds, and why did they leave their own? The worlds that were consumed by darkness had been restored back once Xehanort's heartless was defeated by Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

While it was possible that Dingo and Maria had simply managed to escape their world's destruction and simply didn't want to go back, that was one remote possibility. Riku shook his head as he walked; there was no point in thinking about this issue right now, he simply didn't know enough to do anything other than take guesses.

Two minutes worth of walking through the trees in the dark, Riku found himself standing right in front of the door to Dingo and Maria's ship, pondering just what to do. While it was pretty early in the morning, the pair must have been awake if they truly had been going from world to world for as long as Riku thought they had, then they would know that it wasn't a very good idea to keep your guard down. All it would take is one careless night for the heartless to creep up and claim your heart while you were asleep, and being outside of any towns or cities would make you that much more of a tempting target.

Right now, Riku was just wondering how to get into the ship since its door was obviously locked. While he could just unlock it with his keyblade, for all the technology invested in it, the door wasn't immune to the effects of the keyblade, but literally breaking into what was effectively Dingo and Maria's house wasn't something Riku was willing to do.

He had only used The Way to Dawn on Sora's window out of the need to avoid Sora's ever-frying pan-happy mother, but he had no such excuse for this occasion. Besides, it was one thing to break into your best friend's house; it was a completely different matter to break into a complete stranger's house…especially if they were a girl!

Slowly and reluctantly, Riku raised his hand up to the door, balling it up into a fist. He would just have to knock, even if the notion of waiting for someone to open the door was repugnant to him. Riku's pride was both a gift and a curse…but when it came to normal things, it was almost invariably a curse since Riku would only rarely allow anyone to do ANYHING for him. Still, there were times, when he was either alone or around strangers that he was most likely not going to see ever again, Riku did swallow his pride on rare occasions. His fist was inches from the door when a click suddenly emanated from it as it slide away.

Riku's hand withdrew out of pure reflex, but before any of his more…violent, near-automatic, reactions could take place, the silver-haired keyblade master completely froze as he felt his breathe practically stop in his lungs. Maria stood right in front of him, her right hand on the wall just behind the where the door went into the sides of the ship, presumably over the button that opened and shut the door, clad in nothing but a light blue nightgown that, thankfully, reached down to her ankles.

Riku could feel heat rising to his face as the white-haired mage sluggishly rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, doing little to help salve Riku's embarrassment by unconsciously reminding him that her arms were bare. While Riku prided himself on keeping his cool in virtually all situations, he was mentally struggling to keep his eyes on Maria's face as she seemed to study him, apparently still half asleep, while his mind totally shut down, leaving him with his mouth hanging slightly agape, unable to come up with anything to say. Suddenly, Maria too froze and stiffened in a delayed reaction, Riku could clearly see her eyes widening as she opened her mouth to say something, though no words came out.

Finally the full horror of the situation seemed to dawn upon Maria as a startled yelp sounded out as she tried to cover herself with her bare arms, practically yelling apologies as she quickly bowed and ran inside the ship, presumably to put on some real clothes, leaving a surprisingly red-faced Riku in her wake.

_'Huh…I didn't notice that she was that fair-skinned before…wait, what?!'_ Riku was startled at his own thoughts as he violently shook his head, as if to literally shake them out of his head. While he had, when he was younger, had a bit of a crush on a few girls, the most prominent being Kairi, not one of them had ever caused him to think anything like THAT! There was only one possible explanation…teenage hormones! Still, as disturbing as his lapse of control was, it did let Riku learn at least one thing about Maria that wasn't related to his hormones, which were now under control again.

_'The world that she and Dingo came from must have either had little sun, or been so harsh that it was necessary to stay inside most of the time. That's the only way you can keep skin as fair as that…it was just short of being pale…'_

Riku was abruptly drawn out of his thoughts by the sound of gentle footfalls. He looked up to see Maria in a black halter top and khaki skirt. He was assuming that most of her shirts were sleeveless as well, in order to avoid burning up whenever she put her robe on. Any skirts were probably just "normal" clothes that Maria used to fit into crowds and make herself appear as normal as possible, despite her white hair.

"Um…sorry, Riku…was there something you needed?" Maria was visibly nervous; she wasn't even able to look Riku in the face.

"No…I just came over early to make sure everything was ready. Sora and Kairi should be here in a few minutes…well, as long as Sora actually remembers to wake her up and doesn't stop to watch her sleep for the next few hours…" Both Maria and Riku broke up into a round of giggles and chuckles respectively.

"Wow…he must really like her, huh?" Maria asked after she settled down.

"Yeah…actually I think he's in love with the girl but he-"Riku abruptly stopped and mentally slapped himself in the forehead. If Maria was an enemy, then he would have just told her that Kairi was precious to Sora. While Maria didn't come across as a bad person to Riku, if he went and let things like Sora's feeling for Kairi slip to everyone that seemed friendly then it would be his fault if anything happened! If 

Kairi was thrust into danger, then Sora would run headfirst into danger to save her, if Kairi was hurt, then Sora would do anything to heal her…if Kairi died…

For all his strength and power, Sora was far easier to hurt than he seemed. His friends, while by Sora's own admission were his "power"; they were also his greatest weakness. Riku knew from personal experience that there were people out there who wouldn't show the slightest bit of hesitation in doing harm to Sora's loved ones just to hurt him…

"Riku, are you alright?" Maria asked as she placed a hand on his shoulder, her concern was evident in both her tone and face.

"Uh, yeah…" Riku replied in a slightly nervous manner as he gently brushed Maria's hand off. It was almost foreign to Riku's nature to have someone express concern for him, but Maria was displaying an unprecedented amount of it, despite only having met Riku since yesterday. While Sora and Kairi were aware of Riku's sense of pride, there were times when even they worried about him, and yet, Maria's seemed to surpass even that. It was almost scary…maybe even a bit suspicious. Maria seemed to be polite and caring almost all the time, caring about others was just part of her personality…

But why was she THIS concerned about Riku? It didn't seem to make much sense, well, not to him anyway.

Maria seemed slightly discontented with Riku's reply, but she didn't press the issue. "I see…well, in that case, you may as well come i-, oh!" Riku spun around to see what startled Maria.

"Calm down, Riku, it's just us!" Kairi exclaimed as she held her hands up in exasperation. Sora was right by her side, and judging from his clenched fist, he had nearly summoned his keyblade out of pure reflex. "You've really been on high alert ever since Maleficent attacked, haven't you?" Riku only nodded in response as he looked at the outfit that Kairi had picked out for this trip. The princess of heart now wore a pair of blue jeans, a simple pink T-shirt, and an unzipped red jacket.

The silver-haired keyblade master couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. Kairi frequently switched to a similar outfit whenever she, Sora, and he were training. She justified the switch by saying that her "normal" clothes were hard to fight in, especially the skirts.

Sora just stuck to with clothes that the three good fairies had given him, he cared even less about clothes and how he looked than Riku did, and that was saying something! "So, are we ready to go?" he brunette asked with flourish, eliciting a small giggle from Kairi at his absurdity.

Maria nodded in reply, one of her trademark soft smiles on her face. "Yes, Dingo likes to sleep in late, so just try not to make too much noise. I'm not a very good pilot, but I'm sure that I can get us to this "Disney Castle" place if you give me the right directions. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes for everything to be straightened out, right?"

Maria was met with simultaneous nods from all three keyblade masters…the entire group was blissfully ignorant of just was lay on the road ahead….suffice to say, one trip to Disney Castle wouldn't resolve everything as they had all hoped…

* * *

Maleficent gasped, she clutching at her heart, as she stepped out of the corridor of darkness that she had used to transport herself onto the World That Never Was, or more specifically, The Altar of Naught. She looked up out of habit; the "artificial" Kingdom Hearts that Organization thirteen had made was only a fraction of itself, literally. There was only enough of it left to supply the nearly empty home of the nobodies with enough light to be able to walk around without tripping every five feet.

As she had promised to herself, Maleficent had indeed moved into the castle, taking care to avoid any and all search teams that Mickey had sent to confirm her and Pete's demise. Maleficent scowled as she spun around, hand still clutching at her heart, at the thought of that imbecile. She had just left him on one of the numerous worlds, she wasn't even sure which anymore, not that it mattered. As long as he wasn't around to foul up her plans, the black witch could have a measure of peace around here…

"Enjoying the moon of my home, I see…" Instantly she froze and slowly turned around back towards the altar, fear welling up in the pit of her stomach. Standing several meters behind her, was Xemnas, clad in some kind of torn and beaten black robe, with a satisfied smirk on his face.

"Y-you!" Maleficent cried as she dropped her staff. The state of Xemnas's robe was irrelevant in her mind, he wasn't acting like he was weakened in the slightest, and even at partial strength, Xemnas could still beat Maleficent without breaking a sweat.

"Yes…who were you expecting? King Mickey? Pete? Perhaps Barney the purple dinosaur?" he advanced toward her, smirk still firmly set on his face. "Don't worry, I have no intention of harming you…" Maleficent took a step back, even though she knew that Xemnas wasn't one to lie.

"H-how are you still alive?! The keyblade masters killed you!"

Xemnas seemed to be suppressing the urge to chuckle in a very un-nobody-like manner, something about him seemed…off. "Yes, they did kill me…but I found a loophole to get around that…" Xemnas seemed to take delight in Maleficent's puzzlement as he took several seconds to fully absorb her confused facial expression before he continued. "When a nobody is slain, it fades into darkness; I was no exception to that inevibility. But, unlike my fellows, my heartless was exceptionally powerful and enduring. Somehow, it managed to preserve a single piece of the dark essence that formed it. The essence alone was too weak to be able to even form a shadow, so it simply sat in the dark realm, waiting for something to happen…" Xemnas clapped his hands in an almost joyous manner to add a bit of drama to his explanation.

"The darkness that I was reduced to as a nobody merged with the heartless's essence, and I was essentially reborn as…well, I'm not quite sure what I am now…but that is irrelevant! A heartless and a nobody intertwined, the strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither!"

"Ah…I see…" Maleficent replied as she took another step back. As fascinating as Xemnas's story was, there was no way she was going to risk staying around any longer. She called upon the darkness, intending to open a dark corridor between worlds, only to receive nothing but the sight of Xemnas crossing his arms and smirking.

"I'm part heartless now; the darkness is more inclined to serve me than you…" Maleficent visibly gulped as her eyes widened. "Calm down, as I said before, I have no intention of harming you; in fact, I would like your help with something…" If Maleficent wasn't surprised before, she certainly was now.

"My help? What could you possibly need me for?!" any further questions were silenced by a single wave of Xemnas's hand.

"I want to make a deal with you. You want to get revenge upon the keyblade masters and reign as queen of all the worlds, yes?" The black witch nodded slowly in reply, on high alert and suspicious of what Xemnas was getting at…not to mention any chances to turn things to her favor. "Well, I've only ever been interested in my research, that was why I wanted to gain the power of Kingdom Hearts in the first place, I care nothing for the worlds or who rules them. However, while I don't care for power like you do, I doubt the keyblade masters would simply sit by and allow me to…collect the hearts I need from the worlds in order to continue my experiments. Therefore, I'm willing to lend you the power you need to deal with the keyblade masters and take control of the worlds in exchange for the hearts of the keyblade masters and those that travel with them, as well as regular shipments of hearts from your subjects when you become queen…do we have a deal?"

Maleficent paused in thought before her aristocratic pride could cause her to decline Xemnas's offer out of pure reflex. Having his help did seem to be the only way that she would be able to defeat the kayblade masters, and his price was negligible. The hearts of the keyblade masters and their companions would be of no use to her, and she was planning on using the heartless as tools to enforce her reign of terror anyway, so any hearts that they claimed from dissidents may as well serve a useful purpose. Reluctantly, Maleficent's logical mind won over her sense of pride.

"Very well…we have an accord…"

Xemnas smiled in a slightly unpleasant manner in reply. "Excellent…however, I'm afraid I can't give you any darkness right now, your heart is barely remaining in your body as it is...if I give you any, then you'll turn into a heartless." Maleficent barely suppressed a scowl even though she knew he was right.

What she didn't understand was just how her heart had nearly been ripped from her body. While it was true that using the corridors of darkness did do that to you if you used them too much, Maleficent was well-versed in using darkness and knew that a single trip to the World That Never Was wouldn't weaken her this much.

_'It must have been that boy!'_ That was the only logical conclusion, Maleficent hadn't really thought much of it at the time, but her heart did feel like it was being tugged out of her when she was hit by that blast…was it possible that whatever that thing on the silver-haired boy's hand had the potential to steal hearts somehow?

Maleficent was suddenly snapped out of her thoughts when she heard what sounded like footfalls and clicking mixed together. She spun around, snatching her staff off of the ground as she went, only to have an arm twist it out of her grip in a martial arts-style move. "Good evening…you look a little too serious…" Maleficent tried to get a good look at her tormentor, only to have him, for the voice was unmistakably masculine, spin around, elbowing her lightly in the back and placing a blade of some kind against her throat. Almost insane laughter began to erupt from behind her.

"Ah yes…this is Lucian my…associate…" Maleficent was suddenly released. "He's a bit wild at times but..." Maleficent turned around to see a boy who looked roughly sixteen, grinning psychotically with two knives in his hands. His hair was short and blood red. Lucian's eyes were just as red as his hair, and he was clad in an un-buttoned black trench coat with a red shirt underneath it. Looking down slightly, Maleficent saw that his pants were black and that he wore a pair of boots that seemed to have small claws protruding from the toes, explaining the clicking sound that Lucian made whenever he walked.

Physically, the boy was actually quite handsome, but his twisted smile and almost constant twitching motions practically screamed of his apparent insanity. "So…you're the black witch, aren't you?" his eyes rapidly looked over every inch of her, seemingly piercing into Maleficent's very soul. "Hm…you've had it easy…you've caysed so much pain, but I wonder if you can take half of what you can give?" Lucian flicked his arm and another small knife flew out of his sleeve and into his hand. Whether it was magic or something else, Maleficent didn't know.

"Lucian, restrain yourself…I promise, the keyblade masters should keep you entertained, if you have patience…" Maleficent couldn't help but be relieved when Lucian backed down away from her at Xemans's command. She considered herself to be the queen of evil, but just being in that boy's presence sent shivers down her spine. "Now then, you are not to harm Maleficent in the slightest, no matter how tempted you are…"

Maleficent's head suddenly jerked up. "What?! You want him to help me?!" Xemnas simply nodded in reply while Maleficent mentally sulked. Lucian certainly did seem to be a formidable opponent, but he was an utterly insane and sadistic sociopath! Even Maleficent was only willing to go so far to get her revenge…

She was suddenly shaken out of her thoughts when Lucian flicked her shoulder to get her attention. "Don't worry…I'll get your revenge for you…I can do things that would make people die of shock just thinking about the pain of such an act!" Lucian's eyes almost seemed to glow with anticipation as he let out another round of crazed laughter before stalking off.

Maleficent watched as he went off to do whatever it was freaks like him did, leaving her to ponder how on Earth she had let it come to this…

* * *

OK, crappy way to end the chapter, but I had to get something out soon, so here you are! Anyway, I was thinking about putting this on hold so that I could finish my other story, and then I might do a fantasy AU of Kindom Hearts that I've been knocking around in my head for quite some time now, but I would like your opinions before I do anything.

R&R please, I can't tell you how much it means to me!


	4. Chapter 4: A Knife Through the Heart

Notes: Alright, I know that I said I was going to try to wrap up "The Heart of Darkness", but I'm having some major writer's block for it. I can't even settle on how to start off the next chapter! If this keeps up, I might even have to put it on hold…I just hope that I don't get THAT desperate. Anyway, I've been having some really awesome story ideas, so I now have some motivation to finish my current stories so that I can write the new ones…yes, I know that sounds a little strange.

Disclaimer: I'm not in the mood to blackmail someone else into doing it this time, so it's just me…yay. I don't own anything except my own people and places.

* * *

"So…how long is it going to take to reach Disney Castle again?" Sora sighed from the seat that he'd dragged up into the cockpit of Dingo and Maria's ship. A quick slap in the back of the head from Kairi was his reply.

"Sora, don't be rude!" the brunette winced and clutched at where Kairi had his him, she was standing right behind him while Riku had taken up the co-pilot seat on the grounds that he got there first.

"I'm sorry this ship isn't going fast enough. It has a warp engine, but that's only supposed to be used in emergencies since it puts a lot of strain on the ship, especially the engine." Maria took a moment to point towards a small keyhole that seemed a touch out of place when compared to all the other buttons on the control panel that Maria sat at.

"Don't apologize, it's Sora's fault for being whiny." Kairi said as she playfully flicked Sora in the back of his head, eliciting a groan of protest from the keyblade master. Maria giggled a bit in amusement while Riku rolled his eyes even though a grin formed on his face.

"Would you two grow up and stop acting like five year olds? I'm serious…you guys haven't changed a bit." Sora stuck his tongue out in reply.

"Well, Riku, I think you've been hanging around for too long! What happened to my fun-loving best friend and his sense of humor?" Both Sora and Kairi erupted into laughter at Riku's defeated "Hmph!". He may not have been as playful, laid back, or joking as Sora and Kairi, but his reactions to the duo's exchanges were always priceless. "So…how long is it going to take to get there?" Almost instantly, Kairi smacked Sora in the back of the head again.

"Lazy bum!" she said in a slightly affectionate tone, it was her nickname for him after all!

"Yeah, but I'm YOUR lazy bum…" Sora mumbled underneath his breathe.

"Hm? Did you say something, Sora?"

The brunette's eyes widened as he turned a light shade of pink. "N-no!" Kairi raised an eyebrow, but merely shrugged and looked out through the cockpit in wonder at the passing stars. This was her first time on a ship, even if it wasn't made of gummis.

"Wow…I never thought that I'd get to see the stars this close…they're beautiful!"

"Yeah, that was my reaction when I first saw how things looked in space." Everyone, except Maria, turned around to see Dingo leaning on the frame of the retraced, metallic door behind them. He had a small smirk on his face and he was wearing the exact same clothes that he was in when he first met Sora, Kairi, and Riku. "What? Am I so ruggedly handsome that you can't help but stare?" He gave a fairly cocky salute as the keyblade masters snapped out of their surprise at seeing him so suddenly.

"Wait, did you sleep in that outfit?" Riku asked in disbelief. Ding shrugged sheepishly in reply.

"Heh, yeah, whoops, I guess I did…" he chuckled to himself and walked up next to Maria to check something on the control panel of the ship, ignoring the looks he was receiving from the three keyblade masters. "Huh? Wait a second…" a screen showed several lines of data when Dingo pressed a button below it. "…Stop the ship, now." Dingo's tone abruptly became deathly serious as Maria shot him a questioning look and did as he asked.

His eyes seemed to narrow as he suddenly began to punk commands into the computer at a rate that seemed almost superhuman. "Brother, what-?!"

"Hold on to something!" Dingo yelled as he tightly grip the chair Maria was sitting in, as well as the control panel.

"Why, what's going on?" Sora asked, standing up in order to see what had gotten Dingo so worked up. That was the worst thing he could have possibly done. The whole ship lurched forward as it made a u-turn and then literally rocketed off at warp speed.

The brunette keyblade master was literally tossed into the air, crashing backwards into Kairi. Both the keyblade master and the princess of heart were sent flying backwards, slamming into the closest wall as the ship continued its course. Thankfully, warp travel took only mere seconds and the pressure pinning them there was soon lifted. Sora landed onto the ground with an "oof" and then felt something, or rather someone, fall on top of him.

"Ow…huh? S-sora?!" Kairi practically jumped off of her brunette friend, visibly embarrassed. "S-sorry!" Sora wasn't fairing much better, he wasn't even able to make a sound in reply as he got up off the ground.

"Wait here…this isn't your business…" Dingo commanded as he entered several more commands into the ship's computer before he spun around and drew his pistol from his jackets, taking care to keep it pointed into the air at all times.

"Brother, what's-?" Maria stopped in midsentence as she saw the lines of data on the screen; she appeared to be in shock.

"Maria, let's go…" Dingo said simply as the ship landed with a light "thump".

"Hold it!" all eyes turned to see Riku jumping out of his seat with a glare in his eyes. He clearly meant business and wasn't going to back down easily…not that he ever did. "We're supposed to be headed for Disney Castle, if you're going to drag us along on a side trip, then we at last deserve to have an explanation!" Dingo turned and regarded Riku in an uncharacteristically cold manner as Maria stood between them, visibly indecisive.

"…The scanner picked up something important which may lead us to someone who's important…happy now?" Without giving Riku a chance to respond, Dingo spun around again and opened the ship's entry and exit door, motioning for Maria to follow.

As the pair left the ship, Sora could see Riku glare at the door for several seconds before he began to walk toward it. "Riku, what are you doing?" The silver haired keyblade master stopped for a moment to answer his friend.

"I'm going to find out where we are and what's wrong."

"Well…they said that it wasn't any of our business…" Kairi seemed to be the most conflicted out of the group. She had always been the voice of reason for Sora and Riku when they grew up, always reminding them to get this project done, or not stay up too late, or, in some extreme cases, not to eat someone's entire birthday cake in the first five minutes of the party…it took Sora two weeks to get Kairi to forgive him for that one.

"Maybe it isn't, but we do have a right to know, don't we?" Riku stubbornly crossed his arms in a subconscious gesture to let her know that he was going to find out what was going on, even if it killed him. "…Sora, what do you think? We're not going to get anywhere like this."

"Huh?" Sora's head jerked up in near-disbelief. He had been too busy contemplating Roxas's words when the nobody had dragged him inside his own mind so that they could talk. He had warned Sora to stay alert when around Dingo and Maria, and now was a perfect example of what his nobody was trying to warn him about. Still, Sora wasn't able to immediately respond, Riku admitting that he couldn't do something, even if it was just convincing Kairi to go along with him, alone was unheard of.

"Well…I think that Riku's right…" Sora said slowly, trying not to insult Kairi even in the slightest manner. "They're trying to hide something, so I think we should go after them…" Kairi was about to open her mouth, but she stopped and thought for several seconds.

"…Alright…let's go…"

"What?! You're actually coming with us?!" Riku asked in disbelief, his arms dropping to his sides almost instantly.

"Of course…unlike you, I know when I'm wrong…and I can actually use my brain!" Riku rolled his eyes as Sora and Kairi broke into a round of chuckles and giggles respectively.

"Could we just go already?"

* * *

The three keyblade masters stood in front of beast's castle's gate, apparently Maria and Dingo had dragged them all the way to the world to find whatever or whoever they were looking for. The huge castle was as hauntingly beautiful as ever, shrouded in the evening that seemed to forever dominate the entire area. The three keyblade masters walked forward through surprisingly opened gate, Riku relatively far in the front while Sora and Kairi walked side by side.

"Wow…hey, Sora, what's this place like?" Kairi asked in wonder as she eagerly looked around, as if to try and absorb the sight of the entire castle in a few seconds. Sora placed his hands behind his head as he walked.

"Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but there's a guy who calls himself "Beast" in there who was cursed so that he looks like a monster, and there's also Belle, she's one of the princesses of heart, and then there's Lumie're, Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Chip, and Armoire the Wardrobe who all got cursed along with beast so that they all got turned into things that you'd find around the house.

Kairi nearly stopped in her tracks as she contemplated Sora's rather absurd explanation. She just barely managed to stop herself from getting upset with him for playing some kind of cruel joke. Sora wouldn't have ever done anything of the sort, it wasn't in his nature, so what he said, as ridiculous and absurd as it was, must have been true…she had seen some pretty weird things during her brief stay in Traverse Town when Sora went off to defeat Xehanort's heartless.

"Wow…it…um…sounds like a…interesting place…" Sora nodded and seemed to smile to himself as he reminisced about some of the fond memories he had there, minus the incident with Xaldin. "Yeah…beast may look like a monster on the outside, and he has a short fuse, but he's really a nice guy…I think that's why Belle likes him so much…"

"Hm…he sounds like someone I know…" Kairi made a quick gesture towards Riku, causing Sora to barely suppress another round of laughter. After all those years of being friendly rivals with Riku, anything that insulted or teased the silver haired boy was funny to Sora, no matter how badly it was done.

"Hey, would you slow pokes hurry up? I don't want to spend the rest of my summer vacation waiting here for you to gossiping!" Riku wore a smug expression as he crosses his arms, almost daring either Sora or Kairi to try to make a comeback of some sort. Instead, the pair simply shrugged to each other and ran up to the massive entrance into the castle; it was pretty much the only place that Dingo and Maria could have gone.

"I wonder what Beast and Belle have been up to?" Sora wondered out loud as he pushed on the two massive doors, letting both himself and his two friends in.

The sight that awaited them inside the castle was anything but what Sora expected. Kairi gasped out loud while Riku tensed and froze in place. The entire entrance hall was utterly trashed. The pillars had long and deep scratches in them, the beautiful carpet had been shredded and practically torn apart, and the droplets of blood seemed to be everywhere in the room.

"Wh-what?!" Sora yelled to himself as he looked around in panic. Had something happened that caused Beat to go on a rampage? Even when he had been influenced by Xaldin, Beast hadn't been so blinded as to all but destroy his own castle.

"This isn't new…someone did this before we even landed on this world…" Riku commented as he dipped his finger in one of the countless droplets of blood and then held up his finger, showing it to be clean. The blood had been there long enough to dry, so Dingo and Maria couldn't possibly have been responsible for the carnage.

Kairi suddenly froze and her eyes widened as she stared up towards the ballroom.

"Kairi, what's wr-?" Sora froze too as he saw what had all but paralyzed Kairi in horror. Just above the door frame that lead into the ballroom a message that was obviously meant to cruelly taunt Beast was written in blood.

"Lucian's 12 course anger management class"

The blood seemed to be seeping and clawing it's way to the ground, it had only been added recently in contrast to the rest of the destruction. A crude and twisted imitation of a smiley face was drawn next to the taunt, drawn in blood as well.

Sora simply couldn't contain himself any longer. "Beast! Belle!" he yelled as he summoned the Kingdom Key and made a mad dash for the ballroom. Riku tried to grab the brunette by his shoulder, but Sora, in his panicked state, was simply too fast and too driven to let even Riku stop him.

"Sora, wait! It might be a trap!" Kairi yelled as she and Riku pursued their friend, too far behind to actually do anything. They were only halfway down the entrance hall while Sora was already dashing up the stairs just below the ballroom door. Footfalls came from the two halls that flanked the room as Dingo and Maria came sprinting into the room just as Sora entered the ballroom. "Sora!" Kairi's cry was all the brother and sister needed to understand what was going on.

Without a word, the pair joined Riku and Kairi as they too dashed into the ballroom, intent on stopping Sora fro diving head first into something that even he wouldn't be able to simply fight his way out of…

* * *

The first thing Sora noticed as he sprinted into the ballroom, keyblade drawn, was the fact that it seemed to be completely dark, somehow, every source of light within it had been extinguished, leaving him in total darkness as the door shut behind him.

"Alas, poor beast…I knew him for all of twenty seconds…a fellow of infinite jest!" A single light suddenly illuminated the middle of the ballroom, revealing a boy who looked a year or two older than Sora with blood red hair and a black trench coat standing with his bac turned to the keybearer, holding what looked like an old and dusty human skull. Sora found himself rooted to the spot, only able to stare in 

shock and horror as the boy slowly turned to face him with a psychotic smile that sent chills down Sora's spine.

"It's my version of Hamlet…oh, I apologize, I was having so much fun that I forgot my manners!" the boy bowed in an almost mocking manner towards Sora. "People call me Lucian, but I prefer "the psychotic feak with the great hair!""

"Lucian what the hell are you do-!" The door behind Sora burst open as Kairi, Riku, Dingo, and Maria burst through it, only to run straight into a force field of some kind that separated the area around the door from the rest of the room, effectively cutting off Sora's escape route while separating him from his companions. "Lucian…explanation now…" Dingo furiously crossed his arms and glared at the red-head.

"Oh! Dingo! Maria!" Lucian actually seemed genuinely happy as he totally ignored Sora to wave at the brother and sister. "I'm just going to have to cut this guy's heart out because of a promise I made, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show…" In reply, Dingo furiously punched the force field.

"Fool! You aren't supposed to physically cut out his heart; you're supposed to steal it with the power of darkness!" An all too familiar voice rang out.

"M-maleficent?!" Sora couldn't help but take a step back as the entire room was suddenly illuminated, revealing that the black witch was standing on top of the chandelier, too far away to do any real harm, or be attacked. A stream of dark energy flowed from her staff, eventually leading to a transparent globe of darkness that Belle and Beast were bing held in, the latter had several knives sticking out in various places of his body. Lucian simply shrugged sheepishly in reply as he drew a knife out of seemingly nowhere.

"Whoops…my mistake…well, old habits die hard after all…" The boy began to cackle to himself as Sora took a battle stance. "Come on…let's dance, shall we?" Lucian barely seemed able to contain himself as he charged toward Sora, drawing a second knife with a flick of his free hand.

"Dingo, is there any way past this thing?!" Kairi asked, practically panicking as Sora and Lucian ran towards each other.

"I'm working on it…" the silver haired boy replied as he slid his hand across the force field. "Aha! It's right…here!" A holographic terminal of some sort appeared when Dingo pressed a certain spot on the energy field. "I invented this thing, so I also made this emergency way out…but I have a feeling it's going to take until after this fight's over for me to get us through this thing…" Dingo typed with a nearly inhuman speed, not even glancing up at Sora and Lucian's duel.

"What?! Why?!" Riku asked, for once visibly disturbed and concerned about Sora's well-being.

"Because, Lucian may be insane, but he's just as intelligent as I am, so this code I'm going to have to break won't be an easy one…and he knows how fast I can type…we're friends after all…"

Meanwhile, Sora swung at Lucian's neck, trying to end the fight quickly before Lucian could have a chance to do any real damage; just being in the boy's presence was enough to set Sora on end! To the keyblade master's surprise, the red head easily evaded the strike by leaning backwards, grinning psychotically all the while. "Come on, hit me!"

The keyblade master barely managed to avoid a counter attack from Lucian as one of the boy's knives slightly cut into the skin on his neck. The keyblade master winced a bit but spun away as Lucian's momentum carried him forward, straight into Sora's keyblade.

"How'd you like that!" Sora challenged as he brandished his keyblade while Lucian flew through the air before crashing into one of the many pillars of the room. To his shock, Lucian jumped to his feet almost instantly, despite the fact that blood was dripping from his partially exposed stomach where the kingdom key had cut him, he was lucky to have not been eviscerated.

"That felt good…" Lucian simply stretched his arms, if anything; he seemed stimulated by his injury, not discouraged. "Hey, can I ask you something? Why are people afraid of dying?" He grinned as he suddenly began to fling knives towards Sora, laughing even as he did so.

The brunette hesitated for a moment in surprise before he raised his keyblade and began to block and deflect the knives even as Lucian threw them. The guy had nearly been eviscerated and he was having a good time?! While both he and Riku did enjoy a good sparing session, Lucian seemed to thrive off pain and death itself.

Lucian's mad cackling suddenly came from above as he leaped into the air, twin knives at the ready. Sora cried out as one of the knives cut into his skin when Lucian landed, crouched. He had backed away in time to avoid any serious damage, but his clothes were now partially ripped and he was bleeding a well. Lucian thrust his second knife up towards Sora's face, but the keyblade master jerked backwards in time and then lunged forward with the keyblade as Lucian spun around the attack and leapt backwards.

"I mean, I've had people literally beg me to let them die, there was this one trick I showed this person that involved a rusty cheese grater and a stapler, and he was begging me to kill him on the spot then and there when he'd been begging for something called "mercy" a few seconds earlier!"

Lucian said this as he and Sora traded blows, with the keyblade master blocking his knives and the Lucian by dodging Sora's strikes in twisted dance-like movements. Without warning, Lucian leaped backwards and crossed his arms, seemingly in thought.

"I don't get…I'm just trying to help people and they call me crazy…" As puzzled as he was by Lucian's behavior, Sora wasn't about to waste a chance like this. The brunette lunged forward with a yell, thrusting his keyblade forward, straight at Lucian. "Hm, what?"

Before, Sora had simply been apprehensive of Lucian because of his insanity, but now he was truly afraid. Lucian had just been impaled by an over-sized key and he barely seemed to notice. "Ooooh! So that's what you're acting all surprised about!" Lucian exclaimed as he finally seemed to notice the keyblade that was embedded through him.

"That's not going to work…you see, everyone has something that, when taken away, will just…make them go crazy!" Lucian cackled madly again as he leaned forward to a nearly terrified Sora and began to pull himself down the length of the keyblade. "You can't do it to me though…you can't remove my pain…" Lucian grinned wickedly as he reached inside his coat with his left hand while his right held the keyblade in place, preventing Sora from pulling it out. "You suffered so much without breaking…you deserve a better kind of tormentor…and I'm a man of my word…"

A wickedly serrated black dagger was what Lucian pulled out of his coat and wave in a taunting manner in front of Sora's face. "I'm going to help you now…" The brunette barely registered Lucian's movements as he stabbed the dagger straight through his back. Instead of simply slitting his throat or stabbing him in the neck, Lucian chose to impale Sora through the back, the keybearer could feel the black blade going all the way though.

His eyes rolled back into his head as he screamed in pain, there was something unnatural about the dagger, and whatever it was, it wasn't going to be pleasant. Lucian simply smiled in his usual manner the entire time as he released Sora's keyblade, allowing the brunette to land on his back, gasping for air and clutching his heart, after he practically tore the dagger from his back.

"And now…I need to take a nap…" Lucian fell backwards, opposite of Sora, as his wound finally seemed to catch up with him.

"SORA!" Kairi yelled, striking the force field Lucian took the liberty of setting in desperation.

"Dingo, get this thing down, NOW!" Riku growled even as Dingo seemed to type with a renewed sense of usegency.

"What do you think I've been trying to do for the past five minutes?!" Suddenly, the holographic terminal that Dingo was using flashed green and disappeared, followed by the rest of the field. "Got it!" The group wasted no time in surging towards Sora, who was violently spamming and gasping for breath from whatever Lucian had used to make the dagger.

"Fools, aren't you forgetting something?" Maleficent's voice caused the whole party of heroes to stop in their tracks and look up to see the captive Beast and Belle hovering above them, still unconscious and inside the globe of darkness. The black witch smirked as the heroes looked on in horror before the globe dissipated, letting Beast and Belle plummet to the ground below.

"I'll stop them, you get Sora!" Maria cried out as she seemed to concentrate on her spear-staff, a silver aura seemed resonate throughout it. Kairi and Riku nodded in reply while Dingo furiously glared at Maleficent as she floated down to the ground through the use of her magic.

As Riku and Kairi dragged Sora to safety and Maria used one of her own spells to catch and slowly lower them to the ground, Dingo pointed his pistol towards Maleficent as she walked towards the apparently unconscious Lucian. "Don't even think about it…if you so much as look at him, I'll kill you here and now." Maleficent paused and then smirk triumphantly in reply.

"Oh? You think you can harm me with that?" Despite Dingo's unwavering glare, Maleficent knew that she had correctly called his bluff. Whatever the power that he had used during their last encounter was, Dingo was clearly only willing to use it to a certain extent. A dark energy blast form Maleficent's staff sent Dingo flying through the air into one of the nearby pillars, causing a spider web of cracks to appear where he had crashed as the silver haired boy sank to the ground, unmoving.

"Dingo!" Maria screamed as she dropped Belle and beast the last few inches. Kairi glanced up to see Maleficent opening a dark door behind her and then wrapping some kind of tendril made from her dark magic around Lucian's chest so that she could drag him into it without having to dirty her hands with physical labor. The princess of heart felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Riku nod at her before he stood up and ran towards the black witch with The Way to Dawn at the ready.

In that one silent exchange, Riku had pretty much said that he was entrusting Sora's safety to her. "Kai…ri…" The auburn haired princess looked down at Sora, whatever Lucian had done, it had put Sora in total agony, he was barely able to keep his eyes open.

"I'm here…" she said as she took his hand in hers, squeezing in an attempt to comfort him. "I'm not going to leave you…ever…"

Meanwhile, a furious Riku charged Maleficent, who was just about to step through the dark door with Lucian in tow. "Hold it!" he barked as he swung his keyblade, sending a dark aura attack sailing towards Maleficent. Riku was too far away to be able to attack at close range just yet. To his dismay, Maleficent dissipated the attack with a flick of her wrist.

"Foolish boy, did you really think you could harm me with the power of darkness?! Ha, you're even duller than I thought!" with that insult to Riku's pride and intelligence, Maleficent entered through the dark door and shut it before anyone could stop her.

"Riku, he's getting worse!" Instantly, Riku spun around to see that Sora had stopped moving, but he was perspiring and struggling to take breathes. The silver haired keyblade master ran up and knelt down next to his best friend and then placed his hand over his heart.

"…It's darkness…I can sense it. Whatever Lucian did, he injected Sora with darkness, and it's consuming him from the inside out…" Kairi looked up in surprise, but she thankfully didn't question how Riku was able to sense the darkness, it was a sensitive subject to him. "I can't do anything about it and healing magic won't save him, we've got to get him to Disney Castle before his heart gets consumed…either Mickey or the Cornerstone of Light should be able to save him."

"Then…what are we waiting for?" Riku tensed and slowly turned around to see Dingo and Maria, the former of which was somehow able to walk despite the blow Maleficent had delivered him. "We have to move to a safe place quickly…I've never seen anyone who was able to take Lucian down in a one on one melee duel, so he's not going to stop coming after Sora until he's dead or someone make him swear to stop. Believe me, Lucian won't give up, I know him."

Riku slowly and angrily got up and nodded, though he was glaring at Dingo the whole time. Now wasn't a good time for a story, but once Sora was saved, then he would get the answers he wanted from Dingo one way or another…

"We don't have much time, let's go!"

* * *

Xemnas winced a bit even as he performed the healing spell on the currently unconscious Lucian, who was naked from the waist up as he lay on the medical table in the infirmary on the Castle That Never Was. It was necessary to remove his coat and shirt in order to properly heal the massive wound that had been inflicted upon him. Behind the nobody-heartless hybrid, Maleficent too couldn't help but crunch her face up in disgust at Lucian's exposed chest. It was as muscular as was to be expected of someone with Lucian's incredible physical attributes, but literally every inch of his body was covered in scars and wounds…and this was actually a massive improvement over what it looked like BEFORE the extensive healing therapies that Xemnas had forced upon the boy when they agreed upon their "association".

To say that Lucian 's body made him look like he slept in a bed of unsheathe sword would have been a compliment, there were numerous bullet wounds and hints of bruises in addition to the numerous scars. The wounds, even now that many of them had been healed by Xemnas, transcended any kind of mere abuse or torture by far.

"What happened to give him such…features?" Maleficent asked cautiously as she looked in morbid curiosity. Xemnas simply shrugged in reply as he held his hand over the regenerating wound in Lucian's stomach, the one that had been given to him when Sora impaled him.

"He keeps changing the story every time I ask, I'm not sure if he even remembers, the human mind will erase memories that prove too traumatizing. It's possible that his mind keeps trying to come up with a past, an explanation for his existence, but even the watered down and fake memories that he himself creates are too intense so that he's unable to truly remember anything." Again Xemans shrugged." That's my hypothesis, he could just be playing another one of his games with me…there's file of some sort that he loaned me, it's on my desk in my old office…don't bother looking through my possessions, there's nothing of use there, so don't waste your time."

Maleficent nodded as she watched Lucian's scarred skin regenerate itself thanks to Xemnas's healing magic. "I wonder what he's dreaming about?" It was just idle musing on Maleficent's part, it was the first time she'd seen Lucian without that psychotic smile of his.

"With him, there's no telling. It could be anything from blood and gore to nothing but the blackness that is oblivion." Xemnas continued to work when he abruptly stopped. "Hm? Darkness? Maleficent, did was Lucian wounded by the dagger I effused with darkness so that he could have a fighting chance against Sora?" The black witch thought for several seconds as she recalled the duel between the keyblade master and "The Tormentor".

"It's possible, he impaled Sora with the blade, so it may have stabbed him as well, but if it did, he didn't react…come to think of it, Lucian didn't react to any pain at all!"

Xemnas remained silent as he contemplated the facts and their potential ramifications. "…I personally twisted that darkness so that it would cause agonizing pain to anyone infected by it and then cause the darkness in their hearts to consume them…Lucian is immune to pain for reasons that he has yet to elaborate on, but that doesn't explain why the darkness had had no effect on him or his heart…or at least, no effects that are harmful enough to be noticed…"

Realization dawned upon Maleficent as she recognized where Xemnas was going. "You think he can wield darkness?" Xemnas turned around with a wicked smile on his face.

"Nor simply wield it, master it! Have so complete a control over his inner darkness that he could compete with even the keybearers! The possibilities and potentials" Xemnas seemed lost in his own little world of possibilities and research until Maleficent coughed lightly to get his attention.

"Aren't you forgetting the most important thing for controlling darkness? The thing that Lucian lacks?" Maleficent couldn't help but take pleasure in Xemans's briefly puzzled expression. "Passion. He may enjoy tormenting others, but his emotions lack the passion needed to evoke the darkness within his heart." That simple answer was the explanation for why everyone had darkness within their hearts. Darkness wasn't inherently evil; it just represented the baser feelings in people, acting on instinct and emotion.

Even the purest of romances had passion, and thus darkness, in them. You couldn't be human without at least a miniscule of darkness within you.

"On the contrary, he has a great deal of passion about certain things…and certain individuals…his heart is far more fragile than you might think…"

* * *

Well, there you have it, the fourth chapter! So, Sora's struggling to keep his heart from succumbing to the darkness Lucian infected him with while everyone's favorite sociopath with a sense of humor is gaining the power of darkness…let's just say that if you though he was bad before, just wait until you see Lucian when he's actually upset and trying to kill Sora rather than just having "fun".

Anyway, I'd like to thank my reviewers for giving me the inspiration to continue being a writer, without you, I'd be hopeless! I just wanted to say that I'm sorry if this seemed rushed and if I did a bad job with Lucian's inanity, I'm new to writing people as crazy as he is, so he may not seem as intimidating or scary as I meant him to be…but then, you're only reading about him and not having the mental images, so…

Oh, one final thing, for my truly loyal and consistent reviewers and friends that have been helping me since the beginning of my career on here. I have been having some MAJOR writer's block for The Heart of Darkness, so would you mid n if I put it on hold and started that fantasy AU I mentioned earlier? Like I said, I can't even start the next chapter, so I think I need a break from it, and I may as well get started on the AU before I explode from anticipation, but I want your say on the matter.


	5. Chapter 5: Metroplis

Notes: Alright, I finally got myself motivated enough to write this chapter, I know, you're flipping in your chairs with joy. Anyway, this particular AN is actually important. This chapter will contain spoilers for an old anime movie called "Metropolis". I'm not sure how many people have seen or even heard of it, but I just feel guilty spoiling such a great movie…anyway, I just wanted to say to those of you that have seen it, that this chapter will take place several years after the ending of the movie and will be based off of the picture at the end of the credits that was removed for some unknown reason from the English release…look the movie up on Wikipedia and you should know what picture I'm talking about…and yes, feel free to chastise me for not being able to live with sad endings (though sad events BEFORE the ending are fair game…evil smirk)

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs…hey; I can't come up with something witty to say each chapter you know!

* * *

_"Christ, Lucian! Has anyone ever survived a night out with you?!"_

_"Well…er...there's a first time for everything?"_

_The two voices…one was feminine while the one called "Lucian" sounded almost…sane…too sane…_

_"Alright, what did you do this time? Wait…this…you got it on purpose, didn't you?"_

_"…Maybe…"_

_A sigh was heard, followed by several moments of silence._

_"What is it with you? I know what happened, but I don't think that-,"_

_"What makes you think this has to do with that implant of mine? Oh no, I let myself be nearly eviscerated for different reason…"_

_Now there was no doubt, immunity to pain, a lack of concern over his own well-being, and an air of menace behind every word, the masculine voice was Lucian's…_

_"Well…I'm sure I qualify as a surgeon now, I've seen enough of my own entrails to know what goes where, and I'm sure that I can sew a little skin…most of it's dead anyway…I'm practically a walking corpse now…, eh, Sarah?"_

* * *

Sora awoke with a start in a bed that he didn't recognize. The pain, exhaustion, and sense of hopelessness that he had felt when the darkness Lucian infected him with was consuming him was gone, though the key-bearer did feel rather tired. Everything after being stabbed seemed to be a blur; he could only recall bits and pieces of confused memories. Sora's vision was blurry even as he looked around the room, it was medium sized and seemed pretty much devoid of anything other than his bed and a few lamps on the walls to provide lighting. He could recognize the architectural style as the one used in Disney Castle, the way the walls were made gave it away.

Sora was suddenly made aware of a slight pressure on his chest when he felt movement there. As straining as it was, the brunette moved his head sideways, just enough to see what was resting on it. Sora looked for several, silent seconds, before he practically gasped, eyes widening as he realized just what, or rather, who, was causing the pressure. Kairi was sitting next to the bed in a chair. She must have been there for quite some time as she was asleep, her head resting on his chest while her hand was lightly squeezing his. Sora was now painfully aware of the fact that he was in a pair of pajamas rather than his "normal" clothes.

The brunette began to take deep, yet quiet breathes as he struggles to keep himelf composed, something that he was never very good at. Okay, he knew that Kairi tended to be a touch over-protective of her friends and that she'd probably be worried sick over Riku if the same thing happened to him, but that didn't salve the overwhelming amount of embarrassment Sora was feeling about now. His mind went blank as he tried to think of the best way to handle this, even the rather disturbing dream he had just experienced was secondary to this.

"Um…Kairi?" Sora called out as he lightly poked the princess of heart's head with his finger, only getting a slight stir as a response. "Kairi?" he poked her harder this time, and felt his heart rate increase when the auburn-haired girl seemed to wake, slowly raising her head off of his chest and sleepily looking at him, still half-asleep.

"So…ra?" the brunette could see the beginning of bags underneath her eyes, either he'd been for longer than he thought, or she had been really worried about him.

"Um…hi?" Sora grinned weakly, not quite sure how Kairi was going to react, he could see her eyes widening. "Er…I..uh…" Sora stuttered, unable to think of anything intelligent to say.

"Sora!" To the brunette's surprise, Kairi lunged forward, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug, placing her head literally right next to his. Sora had no idea how to react; the whole ordeal was as terrifying as it was dream-like. Part of him did want to return Kairi's hug, but the other part feared what would happen if he did…

Time passed as he sat, unable to do anything more than lift his arms up and towards Kairi, and after a few more seconds, Kairi began to raise herself up. Sora's dilemma had been solved for him. "Sora, you-," Kairi was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Maria walked into it, holding what seemed to be a tray of food in her hands, only to stop and star wide-eyed at Sora and Kairi.

"O-oh, I'm sorry!" The white-haired girl exited as quickly as she entered, leaving a stunned Sora and Kairi in her wake.

"Um, Kairi?" Slowly, the auburn-haired princess of heart's head turned to face Sora, a slight tinge of pink stained her otherwise flawless features. Kairi let out something that sounded akin to an embarrassed squeak as she literally jumped off Sora and bolted after the door to chase down Maria.

"Maria, wait, that wasn't what it looked like!"

Once again, Sora felt like he had been left out of the loop in some way. He could understand why Kairi would be embarrassed by hugging him, but the way she had reacted to Maria walking in like that, well, it was just over the top! What on earth could Kairi have thought Maria was thinking that would get her so worked up as to leave him hanging without any kind of explanation? Sora sighed audibly to himself as he planted his head back on his pillow, staring up at the ceiling. The keyblade master resigned himself to waiting for someone come into the room and give him the explanation he needed…

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" Sora nearly jumped out of his bed as he heard a familiar voice and saw Dingo standing next to his bed, smirking. The keyblade master wasn't entirely sure how it had happened, but he must have dozed off at some point or another during his waiting. "Well, aren't you going to ask me what happened instead of staring at my ruggedly handsome features all day?"

Sora rolled his eyes, eliciting an even bigger smirk from Dingo. "I'll take that for a "yes". You see, after Lucian skewered you with that knife of his, we had to drag you all the way back to the ship, and when we got there Kairi and Riku nearly tore it apart trying to get it to Disney Castle." Dingo shot Sora a rather rueful look, causing the keyblade master to grin weakly. Riku and Kairi could get a little…drastic at times…though Riku tended to get far more ruthless over little things. "Anyhow, we eventually managed to get you here before that darkness devoured you and King Mickey; you know, that walking rat-,"

"He's not a rat, he's a mouse…" Sora couldn't help but glare a bit at Dingo as he grinned sheepishly and shrugged.

"Oh…sorry, we only had rats where I came from." The brunette barely managed to contain the urge to ask Dingo about his own home world, he was more curious about what happened to cause him to be bed-ridden. "Right, now where was I? Oh yeah, well, Mickey said some mumbo jumbo about "The Cornerstone of Light", and had us drag you near it to get the darkness exorcised , and that about sums things up. The darkness was disposed of, but it was so straining on your heart, mind, and body that you passed out for three days, you almost lost your heart…actually, this is the first time any of us has seen you awake or not had to force-feed you."

Dingo seemed to shutter and mutter several unpleasant things to express his disgust with the things he had seen when feeding Sora. Meanwhile, the keyblade master simply sat there in disbelief. "Th-three days!?" Again, Dingo shrugged and seemed to take it in stride.

"Yeah, three days of reading through Jimmy's journals or whatever…you know, I had no idea that you could meet so many cute girls on a quest to defeat darkness, you really have to take me with you the next time you go on one of those!" Sora simply stared awkwardly at Dingo's enthusiasm before the silver-haired boy began to calm down, lowering his fists, which he had thrown into the air in excitement. "Of course, half the time Riku was being a complete jerk and kept bugging me about where Maria and I came from and how we know Lucian."

"WHAT?!"

"Yep, I just told him that I would explain to everyone when you woke up…I just don't get it, why do people always seem to take everything out on me and not Maria? Oh well, Riku should be storming in here in…five…four…three…two…" Suddenly, a very upset-looking Riku burst through the door, followed by Kairi, Mickey, and an apologetic-faced Maria. "…Darn, I was one second off…"

"Dingo, explanation…now…" Riku demanded with his arms crossed and a scowl set across his face.

"Right well…let's see…er…ugh…alright this is going to be harder than I thought…" Dingo rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment while Sora along with everyone else, slapped their foreheads in frustration. "It's a complicated story, alright? Hm…say, would you mind making one more trip off-world? Everything should make sense if we could get to Maria and I's home world…" Dingo's mood was nearly impossible to predict, he seemed serious, but there was an underlying tone of sorts in his voice…

From his position on his bed, Sora could see Maria's facial expression change only slightly. Either she wasn't nearly as concerned about returning to her and her brother's original home as he had imagined, or the white-haired girl was an incredible actor. "Um, your majesty?" All eyes turned to Sora as he called out for the mouse king. "Do you need us to help deal with Maleficent?"

The mouse king took several seconds before he replied; his face was contorted in thought during the entire span. "Yes, but not now. I'm going to take Donald and Goofy with me to warn the other worlds, starting with Radiant Garden. I don't know how Maleficent managed to hide on The World that Never Was without me knowing, but there's no telling what she had planned, for all we know, she could be expecting us to run after her…still, I don't like the idea of you going to a world you've never been to before while Maleficent is at large." King Mickey turned to face Dingo with a demeanor that Sora hadn't seen since the battle for Radiant Garden. "Dingo, are you sure that it's absolutely necessary to go off-world to give an explanation?"

The silver-haired boy simply nodded in reply while placing his hands behind his head, accidently positioning his cap in a slight angle. "Yeah, I'm afraid so. You know that expression "a picture's worth a thousand words"? Well…" Mickey sighed and exchanged a look with Riku, who stubbornly crossed his arms in reply. "…Sora, it's your decision, I'm not YOUR king…"

* * *

Sora tried to ignore the glare that Riku was shooting him as Dingo and Maria led the group away from their ship and through a barren, almost wasteland-like, devoid of everything except the occasional piece of metallic scrap. This time, the trip on Dingo and Maria's ship was filled with tension and an almost awkward silence. Even Sora, as naïve as he was, could pick up on the fact that Riku was apparently nursing a grudge of distrust against Dingo, at least until he could get an explanation out of him. With his life-time of experience with Riku, Sora was guessing that the keyblade master of dawn was upset over the fact that Dingo was dragging Kairi and him from the safety of Disney Castle.

Even though Riku was well-aware of their formidable abilities, he was as unwilling as ever to let them get in harm's way, especially after Lucian's attempt on Sora's life. Kairi seemed to have a similar opinion, 

though she was more trusting of Dingo and Maria, the pair had taken injuries fighting Maleficent, if they wanted to harm Sora, then they had passed up several opportunities to do so.

Personally, Sora really didn't see how Dingo's background could be so complicated that it would necessitate a trip all the way to his home world, but the silver-haired boy hadn't really done anything to deserve any distrust, and he did seem upset at Lucian for trying to kill him.

"Sora, are you alright?" The brunette was shaken from his thoughts when Kairi fell into step beside him, a concerned expression dominating her features.

"Huh? Oh yeah…I was just thinking…"

"Really? I'm surprised, that's not something you do often…"

"Hey!" Sora exclaimed with a pouting expression as he crossed his arms. "That's not funny!" Kairi only giggled in reply and shook her head. Despite the tease, Sora couldn't help but feel happy himself, just being with Kairi had that effect on him, she was, both literally and metaphorically, his light in the dark.

When his heart had been claimed by darkness, it was Kairi who saved him.

When he had finally lost all hope upon realizing that he had been helping Organization thirteen all along, it was his drive to reunite with her that kept him from despairing.

In all of his darkest moments, Kairi had been there for him, either physically or mentally, and she never failed to support him when he needed it the most. Making her smile was just one of the ways he could pay her back.

"We're here…" Dingo said in a tone so low that Sora was barely able to hear him. "Welcome…to Metropolis!" Sora and Kairi rushed forward, Dingo and Maria were standing on the side of a cliff that seemed to overlook the city that they apparently grew up in. The brunette heard the ground behind him shift rapidly, apparently Riku was just as curious as he and Kairi were to see what Dingo and Maria's home was like.

Sora rushed forward eagerly, imagining a huge, bustling city full of life and joy in the middle of the desert wasteland that they had been walking through.

Below the blue eyed key-bearer was a vast collection little more than rusted scrap. There was the occasional skeleton of a skyscraper, or even a vague outline of a small building amidst the ocean of debris, but the vast city had clearly been utterly devastated by something.

"…Or more specifically, what's left of Metropolis…" Dingo continued in an almost bitter tone. "Come on, once we get into the city, I'm pretty sure things should start coming together…" Sora and Kairi exchanged looks before they followed the pair, Riku bringing up the rear behind them.

The piles of derelict were seemed even larger now that Sora was so close to them; something he hadn't thought was possible. Dingo and Maria led the trio in silence, though Maria seemed to glance about as 

though she were nervous or even scared of something. Of the two, Maria was clearly more affected by whatever happened, though Dingo's normally cheerful demeanor had evaporated the moment they stepped foot on this world.

"So, what happened here?" Riku asked, speaking up for the first time since they had left Disney Castle. Obviously, it was a great relief to Sora to finally hear his best friend saying something.

"That's the thing…we don't know…" Maria stopped and turned around; her blue eyes were filled with emotion. "That's why Dingo wouldn't just explain everything on Disney Castle…he doesn't like admitting that he's not all-knowing in front of people." Dingo merely groaned and grunted a bit in frustration, causing Maria to chuckle a bit to herself. "I'm sorry if he worried you…I know all of this must seem pretty suspicious, I mean, we have only just met."

Sora looked over at Riku to see, much to his surprise, that he actually looked a bit guilty. Whenever Riku was wrong, he always tended to shrug it off with a "hmph" and a scowl. For him to actually look sorry…Riku must have really been thinking some terrible things to feel so guilty. What happened next practically made Sora's jaw hit the floor.

"…Oh…I see…sorry…"

Riku apologizing to Maria?! The guy hadn't even formally apologized for trying to kill his best friend for no real reason, and he was apologizing to someone that he had met only a few days ago? The idea of Riku swallowing his pride was far-fetched enough, but to see him actually doing it…

Maria didn't seem to realize the magnitude of what was going on, as she had a puzzled expression on her face. "Sorry? For what?" Either Riku had been hiding his suspicions from her, or Maria was very naïve.

"…Nevermind…" Riku grunted, clearly in a sour mood now that he had said the word "sorry". Sora knew all too well that Riku was only willing to compromise so much before he would go back to being his normal, cocky, ruthless, and all-around dark self…why girls found his best friend so attractive, Sora would never know. Good looks couldn't cancel out all of his flaws!

_'It's about time that you finally started to view him for what he is…'_

_'Huh, R-Roxas, what do you mean?!'_

Sora could hear his nobody's mental sigh. Somehow, the brunette had a pretty good idea where Roxas was going; they were one and the same now, just different aspects of the same person.

_'Alright, let me put it this way, Riku is YOUR friend, not mine, even if we are one person. First he abandoned you and Kairi for the darkness so that he could start running around and seeing what the other worlds were, then he tried to kill you for no good reason, then, after all that he'd been through, Riku decided to trust DiZ and kidnapped me. Do you have any idea what it was like being brainwashed into thinking the computer around you was your home and then finally getting out and remembering everything? At the time, Riku thought that forcing me back into you would mean the end of my existence, he tried to kill me just so that he could swap funny stories with you sooner!'_

Sora winced under the assault of the anger he felt rising. Most of it was Roxas's anger, but the blond nobody was a part him, even if he was just the qualities that he rarely let out. The truth was, part of Sora had always been holding a grudge against Riku for leaving him and Kairi to be devoured by the heartless while he went about taking in all of the sights across the universe, Roxas had just given those feelings a voice.

"So, are we going to stand here awkwardly all day or do you want to find out what happened?" Dingo asked with a smirk gathering the attention of all.

"Wait, I thought Maria said that you didn't know what happened," Kairi said in a confused tone. Sora nodded to reinforce her point.

"Ah, that is true my good friend!" Dingo exclaimed with one of his cheerful smirks as he spun around, causing Sora to exchange looks with Kairi. "But I do know someone that knows the specifics of it all…"

* * *

"Kenichi and Tima's Robot Company?" Kairi asked with a questioning, even skeptical, expression on her face. Sora couldn't blame her; the building that Dingo had led them all to really didn't look like much, though it was a cut above the ruins that surrounded it. The building was made of brick rather than the metal that now lay ruined and strewn across every inch of the ground. It was actually like most of the shops that Sora had seen in old pictures, relatively small with large windows in the front to show whatever the shop happened to be selling to anyone who walked by, the windows in this building were filled with various gears, bolts, and pieces of electronics that would make Sora's brain explode if he ever tried to figure out how they worked.

"Wait a minute, we haven't seen anyone for the past ten minutes we've spent just climbing through the rubble of this place, even if there was someone manning that place, then they wouldn't have anyone to sell anything to," Riku said as he looked around, in a curious manner rather than suspicious.

"Just because you haven't seen anyone doesn't mean they aren't there," Maria replied as she gracefully walked up to the door of the building, placing her right hand on it. "…Sometimes the people who you'd expect to need help aren't the ones who are truly in need or even in danger." The white-haired girl turned around to face Riku, her facial expression was impossible for Sora to read. "But you would know that better than anyone else, wouldn't you?"

Riku practically glared back in reply and looked away, suddenly developing a fascination with the ruined building next to "Kenichi and Tima's Robot Company". Apparently, this wasn't the first time Maria had said something similar to Riku while Sora was out…the brunette mentally groaned at just how much he had missed in those three days.

"…Fine…I understand…" Maria said with a sigh. "Well, no point in standing out here any longer…" She turned around once more and lightly knocked on the door before stepping back, resigning herself to wait until the door opened.

Sora was able to hear footfalls as whoever lived in the small building moved to answer the door. A girl who looked a year or two younger than him opened the door, looking first at Maria and Dingo and then at him, Kairi, and Riku with curious brown eyes. The girl had short blond hair and wore a white, buttoned shirt and a bar of blue-jeans rather than "feminine" clothing. There was something…different about her; she seemed innocent, almost angelic in a fashion.

While Sora knew that Roxas tended to brag about Namine's appearance being almost holy (something he did to get a blush out of her whenever she embarrassed him whenever the two were together), it was this girl's…"aura" so to speak, that broadcasted her innocence, though she did look like an angel of sorts.

'…Namine's more beautiful…' Roxas sniffed in reaction to Sora's thoughts. While he and Kairi had reasoned that Roxas and Namine's apparent attraction to each other was their own affair since they were still separate beings from their somebodies, there were times when Sora preferred to think otherwise…unfortunately, Namine never talked about Kairi to him, and Roxas was woefully tight-lipped about his and Namine's "outings". If Kairi felt anything for him, the brunette was going to have to find out the old-fashioned way…something he knew was not likely to happen anytime soon.

"Hello, Tima, do you know where Kenichi is right now?" Maria asked with a quick bow of politeness after looking over the girl in what seemed to be surprise. So, the "robot company" wasn't just a building that had survived whatever had devastated the rest of the city, it had been either built or converted into its current state. Tima opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, a second pair of footfalls echoed through the building and she stepped aside to let a boy who looked exactly her age come up to the door.

He had brown hair and eyes and an innocent face, though something about it suggested that he had seen things that had sorely tested that same innocence. He was clad in clothes that were identical to Tima's, though he wore a brown jacket over his shirt. "Maria, Dingo, what are you doing here?" the boy, apparently Kenichi, asked in surprise.

"Oh, we just needed you to explain the specifics of what happened to Metropolis…if you don't mind…" Dingo's tone carried a note of…worry…he wasn't happy about being back on his home world, though Sora didn't understand what could possibly drive someone to hate their own home…

* * *

Kairi sat down next to Sora, who was next to Riku, on the couch opposite of the one Kenichi and Tima were sitting on. Both Dingo and Maria had elected to stand for a reason that the princess of heart couldn't fathom, though Dingo seemed nervous about something. Maria remained as calm as always in contrast to her brother. As usual, Sora really didn't seem to notice anything wrong, he always did tend 

to take things at face value, and he had the attention span of an ADD-infected rat, unless someone was at risk.

Sora really was a hero, but he was also a kid at the same time…something Kairi found both endearing and frustrating at times. If anything, the brunette seemed more interested in a small, foor-high robot that he had nearly stepped on when Tima and Kenichi welcomed all of them into their living room on the second floor of their house/shop. Apparently, they did indeed have customers amidst the ruins of Metropolis…robots of all sorts. While Sora was perfectly happy to accept that there was a city-load of robots running about, Kairi's curiosity demanded an explanation…she was every bit as adventurous as Sora and Riku!

"So…what happened?" Kairi asked somewhat awkwardly, unsure of how else to phrase her question. Kenichi seemed to take a deep breath while Tima, who previously seemed to be content watching Sora play with the small robot at his feet while she held Kenichi's hand, seemingly out of habit, suddenly seemed to stiffen and jerk straight up in her seat.

"Well…it all started when I met Tima, several years ago…" Kenichi stated, apparently trying to recall everything that had happened. "My uncle and I came to Metropolis when it was still a city; he was a detective and brought me along with him as his assistant to help arrest a criminal he'd been investigating…the man was a brilliant scientist, and he'd been hired by the ruler of this city to make a very special robot for him…"

Tima seemed to wince to herself as she sat back into the couch, a troubled expression written all over her face as she seemed to tighten her hold on Kenichi's hand. Still, the boy continued.

"Tima was that robot…she's the first and only one to even resemble a human…." Kairi jerked back in surprise, she could feel both Riku and Sora doing the same.

"S-she's a robot?!" Sora blurted out before either Kairi or Riku could do anything to stop him from doing something impulsive, much to the princess of heart's chargrin.

"Yes…" Tima replied, almost sullenly as she pulled her legs up onto the couch and buried her head in them, almost as if she didn't want to see Sora, Kairi, or Riku's faces.

"That's cool!" the robotic girl raised her head in surprise. Tima opened and shut her mouth several times, but no words came out. Kenichi seemed to smile pleasantly at the exchange even while Tima struggled to express herself and a sense of relief flooded into Kairi. She had seriously expected Sora to unintentionally hurt the robot-girl's feelings, which she obviously possessed.

"Most people view robots as just tools that can be treated as poorly as anyone wants…apart from me and my uncle, you guys are the only five I've ever meet who've reacted to Tima so well." Sora and Kairi both smiled a bit at Kenichi's praise while Riku just sat awkwardly, not quite knowing how to react. "Anyway, the scientist was killed and his lab was nearly destroyed in a fire while Tima was still in it…" The boy glanced over at the blond as she slowly let her legs down; he seemed embarrassed by something…perhaps a memory?

(AN: If you've seen the movie, you'd know why he'd be embarrassed about the time he first saw/found Tima snickers)

"The two of us wondered around the city when I was separated from my uncle, but we were eventually caught…it turned out that the ruler of the city had Tima built to replace his dead daughter and to interface with some kind of super-weapon he built to conquer the world." Kenichi sighed as Tima seemed to move closer to him as she too recalled the most terrible memories of their lives so far. "There was this guy named Rock who shot Tima to try and deactivate her, but that caused her programming to take over and force her to activate the weapon…she tried to wipe out all humans on the planet because they didn't fit with what the program that was controlling her deemed necessary to function…all of the other robots began to rebel throughout the city while I barely managed to get Tima out of the weapon before it could fuse to her."

Kairi could see an almost overwhelming amount of guilt and even fear in Tima's eyes as she practically buried herself back into the couch while tightening her grip on Kenichi's hand. "The program that was running her made her try to kill me, but she managed to get control in time to stop…but Tima was destroyed when she fell off the skyscraper we were in and the reactor was destroyed by the rebelling robots…"

Kairi couldn't help but notice that Dingo seemed to be rooted in place as he stared out of the window at something, though she couldn't tell what.

"The whole city was destroyed in the explosion caused by the weapon's reactor…but…I just couldn't leave until I rebuilt Tima, and all of the robots left in the city…they…they helped me every step of the way, from finding all of Tima's part to putting her back together…"

"Wow….that's…wonderful!" Kairi exclaimed joyfully, it was just such a beautiful story, it was the kind of thing that uplifted you right when everything seemed lost. Tima had effectively died, but that didn't stop Kenichi at all…he cared enough for her to try and rebuild her amid the ruins of a steel jungle, a daunting task by any and all measures.

Suddenly, Dingo staggered back, horror stricken. "Dingo, what's wrong?" Maria asked, turning to her brother. Her voice sounded panicked, though it was controlled somehow.

"BOMB!" he shouted in reply as he grabbed Maria and practically dragged her into the center of the room. "Shield, now!" Kairi barely had time to even process what was going on before a shining white barrier of magic enveloped all within the room…and not a second too late. And immense stream of fire, wood, and metal erupted from below them, slamming itself against Maria barrier while it engulfed the rest of the room in a maelstrom of destruction.

Kairi saw Sora jump off the couch, unquestionably in an attempt to somehow protect her and Riku, and try to add his magical strength to the barrier. He raised his keybalde just as Kairi and Riku did the same, but the Maria's barrier collapsed around them, exposing them to the carnage outside of it.

Out of reflex, Kairi stiffened and froze as she flew through the air; Maria's barrier has shielded her from most of the explosion, so the pain was bearable…somehow. Her leg burned and Kairi was certain that several sharp objects slice her body as she fell, but the sensation of falling and then hitting the ground on her side was what dominated her senses.

Kairi's whole body ached and jarred as she opened her blue eyes, her vision was blurry to boot. "So…ra?" she called out, unable to move even a finger. The auburn haired girl could feel her strength waning, she couldn't remain conscious much longer, and the metal she fell on wasn't exactly comfortable either. Kairi tried to move, to get up, but she couldn't…the fall had shaken her whole body, it was almost agonizing to just stay conscious….

And then, a crazed laughter echoed out through the entire area as she heard footsteps behind her…

"Magnificent…have you ever imagined what it would be like if the whole world was set on fire like that? All the lives being extinguished at once…the burning, the maiming, the destruction…it would be the most beautiful thing that could ever exist!"

Kairi felt her blood run cold when she heard Lucian's voice, he sounded excited and she was in no position to fight. Precisely how he had been able to recover from his wounds so quickly was the last thing on her mind, fear for both herself and Sora was the one thing on her mind right now…it snaked its way into her heart and mind like a snake exploring its home."Anyway…down to business!" She could feel his breathe on her as the murderous boy squatted down next to her.

"Now, I need to ask you a question or two before you go unconscious…I won't bother with cutting you up yet, you wouldn't get anything out of it anyway, and I'm not in the mood to experiment…"

Kairi felt his hand grip her jaw as he forced her to look at him as he grinned wickedly down at her, his eyes seemed to have an almost satanic glow to them. Her only saving grace was the darkness that was rapidly eating away at her vision, consuming it.

"Oh fine, I can collect Dingo myself…just so you know, he knew something like this was going to happen…you see, he and I are both classified as mass murderers and terrorists on this world….just sleep on that for a bit, sweet dreams!" Kairi could feel her eyes widen at Lucian's words, while insane, he didn't seem to be the kind to lie…could what he have said been true? The princess of heart tried to open her mouth and say something, but a choked sound was all she could muster as her consciousness faded.

The last thing she saw before fading away was Lucian's grinning face as he stood up and walked off, singing a bit to himself as he toyed with one of his countless knives.

"Drawn in by an unseen cold hand,  
I pass even time as it flows to eternity.  
As your eyes look away into the hazy distance,  
what is revealed to them, I cannot see…"

* * *

Okay, so what did you think? I know it's probably not the best, but…yeah…just so you know, Lucian's singing really does connect rather strongly with his past…actiually, the whole song kind of outlines his role and what becomes of him in this story, but I doubt you guys know the full lyrics, and even if you did, only I know exactly what's going to happen…

Oh, and the person Lucian was talking to was a person from his past…they're the person that drone named Sarah that Digo had in the last chapter or so was based off of...

One last thing, I"m sorry if you fan-girls don't like what Roxas said about Riku, but my opinion of him has just kind of taken a nose-dive since KH2...and a few fics...I'm just saying, Riku HAS acted like a complete jerk for no good reason in the first two games...he had free-will all the way up until Sora defeated him for the first time on Hollow Bastion...and don't even get me started up again on his treatment of Roxas!

Anyway, just tell me what you think, it's your reviews that inspire me and allow me to improve you know!


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